After this election, North Carolina will stop using Social Security numbers to verify the identities of many new voters after questions arose this week about the legality of its registration practices.

Friday is the last day to register to vote in North Carolina for the Nov. 4 general election.

Think you’re registered but not sure? Check here.

To register to vote in this state, a person must:

-Be a U.S. citizen.
-Be a resident of North Carolina and the county in which you’re voting for 30 days before the election.
-Be 18 years old by the election.

Get More Information About Voting

Starting Oct. 16, residents can register and vote the same day at One-Stop Voting Sites. If you choose to do this, you cannot vote on Election Day. One-Stop Voting is not available Nov. 4. Learn More.

RALEIGH, N.C. – North Carolina’s elections chief lashed out at a report Thursday that suggested the state had misused a Social Security Administration database to purge voters from the state’s registration rolls.

Gary Bartlett, the director of the State Board of Elections, said it was “simply untrue” that some qualified voters in North Carolina could be disenfranchised.

A front-page story in The New York Times questioned why North Carolina and several other states had run so many checks of voter registrations through a Social Security Administration system used to validate a registrant’s identity. The Socials Security Administration has said North Carolina has run some 400,000 queries.

Officials in Colorado and Michigan also questioned the validity of the Times’ story.

Bartlett said many of the state’s 700,000 new registrations may have come from people with out-of-state driver’s licenses, and therefore listed their Social Security number to confirm their identity. He said others may have simply chosen to provide their Social Security number instead of their driver’s license number on registration paperwork.

Barlett added the lack of a Social Security number match does not lead officials to remove voters from the rolls. He said voters in question can confirm their identity on Election Day or, as a last resort, vote with a provisional ballot and confirm their identity later.

“The problem with these stories is they undermine the public’s confidence in North Carolina’s elections,” Bartlett said in a statement.

Bob Hall, who heads the advocacy group Democracy North Carolina, defended the elections board and called the Times story “reprehensible.”

“Editors and election watchdogs … need to understand and examine the voter registration process in North Carolina before they question its validity and make claims about its deficiencies,” Hall said.
 
Hall said he’s found that many voter registration forms are incomplete or partly illegible, and many prospective voters provide a Social Security number instead of driver’s license number. Therefore, he said it’s not surprising the state would need to run so many verifications through the Social Security Administration database.
 
Hall said he’s worried the story might incite fear when there’s nothing to worry about.

“What we don’t need are inflammatory stories about stolen elections or cheated voters that have no basis in fact,” Hall said.

NEW YORK – Tens of thousands of eligible voters have been removed from rolls or blocked from registering in at least six swing states, and the voters’ exclusion appears to violate federal law, according to a published report.

The New York Times based its findings on reviews of state records and Social Security data.

The Times said voters appear to have been purged by mistake and not because of any intentional violations by election officials or coordinated efforts by any party.

States have been trying to follow the Help America Vote Act of 2002 by removing the names of voters who should no longer be listed. But for every voter added to the rolls in the past two months in some states, election officials have removed two, a review of the records shows.

The newspaper said it identified apparent problems in Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina. It says some states are improperly using Social Security data to verify new voters’ registration applications, and others may have broken rules that govern removing voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election.

Democrats have been more aggressive at registering new voters this year, according to state election officials, so any closer screening of new applications may affect their party’s supporters disproportionately, the Times said.

The result is that on Election Day, voters who have been removed from the rolls could show up and be challenged by political party officials or election workers.

The six states seem to have violated federal law in two ways. Some are removing voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election, which is not allowed except when voters die, notify the authorities that they have moved out of state, or have been declared unfit to vote.

And some of the states are improperly using Social Security data to verify registration applications for new voters, the newspaper reported.

“Just as voting machines were the major issue that came out of the 2000 presidential election and provisional ballots were the big issue from 2004, voter registration and these statewide lists will be the top concern this year,” said Daniel P. Tokaji, a law professor at Ohio State University.

RALEIGH, N.C. – With the election now just 27 days away, time is quickly running out for you to register to vote.

That has area election boards working overtime to keep up.

Here are the fast facts:

The deadline to register is at the close of business this Friday.

Early voting for the election officially begins next Thursday, Oct. 16.

In Wake County alone, the Board of Elections has received 25,000 voter registration and change of address forms in the past week.

As the stacks of mail have piled up the last few days, crews have had to work to keep up.

“We’ve had to move up to the fourth floor just to have enough space in order to process all the mail,” said Deputy Director Gary Sims.

Workers are separating new voter registrations from change of address forms and absentee ballot requests, and trying to process it all as quickly as possible.

“We had kept pretty much up to date up until sometime towards the end of September,” said Director Cherie Poucher.

“We’ve got every desk full downstairs,” said Sims.  “And if anybody goes on break, or if somebody is off, or can’t work that day, we put another person in that seat.  So it’s an ongoing process.”

They’re so swamped by now that there’s a chance many people will not get their registration card back before Nov. 4.

Not to worry. 

“You do not need your vote card to vote,” said Poucher.

Polling stations will be ready for people who don’t have their cards yet, and have other ways to look up voters, such as driver’s license numbers.

“That’s almost instantaneous,” said Poucher.  “It goes from our computer to the state computer to DMV and comes back.”

At this rate, the total vote count should shatter previous numbers; both at the polls and in terms of absentee ballots.

“Seeing the pace we’re on for about 1,000 requests a day — and we have until Oct. 28 for an absentee request — that is also going to probably set an all time record,” said Poucher.

And elections workers wouldn’t have it any other way.

“To go through the work that we do and then see the high percentage of people that vote,” said Poucher.  “That puts a smile on all of our faces because that’s what democracy is about.”

NBC17 talked with representatives from both the Obama and McCain campaigns today; they said they were thrilled to hear about the big numbers, and credit the historic nature of this election.

Some Wake County voteres may receive their voter registration card late, but will still be able to vote, the Wake County Board of Elections said this morning.

ATLANTA – Federal officials have asked election officials in six states to investigate whether social security number checks are being improperly run on people registering to vote.

Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue sent a letter Friday to the secretaries of state of Alabama, Georgia and battleground states Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio. The letter noted they had submitted “extraordinarily high levels” of verification requests.
 
“Such a volume appears to be much greater than one would expect, given that states of comparable or larger populations have a significantly lower number of verification requests,” Astrue wrote in his letter to Georgia officials.

With nearly two million requests since Oct. 1, 2007, Georgia has made far more social security number verification requests than any other state, according to the Social Security Administration. Alabama was second with about one million requests.

Helen Butler, of the independent Georgia Coalition for the Peoples’ Agenda, said she would like an explanation why the number of requests far exceeds the number of newly registered Georgia voters.

“We certainly will be following this very closely because we want to make sure the process is being carried out correctly,” said Butler, whose advocacy group educates voters.

Georgia Deputy Secretary of State Rob Simms said Tuesday that Astrue’s letter arrived a day earlier and it was the first time state officials were alerted to an unusually high number of requests.

“At this point today, I would dispute those figures,” Simms said in a phone interview.

By Monday’s deadline, Georgia registered just over 406,000 new voters this year for the Nov. 4 election, said Matt Carrothers, a spokesman for Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel.

Alabama Secretary of State Beth Chapman attributed the high number of verification requests to the large number of people registering to vote. Alabama residents have until 10 days before the ballot to register.

“We have had a record number of people register to vote … If that’s increasing the number of times the Social Security Administration is having to check numbers that’s an excellent problem to have, and it means more people are involved in democracy,” Chapman said.

Because of the letter, Chapman said she is asking voter registrars to first check drivers’ licenses whenever possible.

Gary Bartlett, director of North Carolina’s State Board of Elections, said the Social Security Administration was questioning why the state has had almost 400,000 social security validations for the year. But the state also has had some 700,000 voter registrations ahead of Friday’s deadline.

While drivers’ license are used to verify many voters, Bartlett said North Carolina’s large military and college communities could be registering with out-of-state licenses. He said others may have used social security numbers as the easiest to remember.

Under the Help America Vote Act of 2002, many states have an agreement with the Social Security Administration requiring them to submit the last four digits of a new voter’s social security number for verification if the person does not have a valid state-issued ID such as a license.

“Rest assured, we think this is just absolutely off-base,” Bartlett said.

Astrue wants the six states that received the letters to make sure their officials are verifying only those new voters who don’t have acceptable state-issued identification, in line with their agreements with the agency, Social Security Administration spokesman Mark Lassiter said Tuesday by phone.

North Carolina’s voter rolls have swelled by more than 600,000 this year to a record 6 million.

The registration deadline is now 10 days away, and the Wake County Board of Elections is busy.