This is the Wilmington Standard Daily Update for Friday, February 6th, 2026.

WHQR is reporting that over 70,000 ballots in the state of North Carolina have missing information on their registration forms.  The state Board of Elections sent out letters starting in August advising those who are on the list that they need to fix their registrations by today.  This is all in response to a settled agreement with the United States Department of Justice.

No voter on the Registration Repair project list will be removed from the voting rolls.  If they do not repair their ballots by today, they can still cast a provisional ballot.  Additionally, the votes they cast for US Senate and US House – even in the primaries – must be counted.  Until their information is cleaned up, however, their votes for local and state races will not be tallied.

Voter roll maintenance is essential to our Republic.  Yet states are often hindered in their efforts to keep these lists up to date by Democrat outrage and lawsuits. It seems the folks on the left want to make it as hard as possible for any sort of review – no matter how obvious the troubled data seems. For example, here in North Carolina the Public Interest Legal Foundation reports close to 30 thousand potential interstate duplicates exist – meaning potentially people are voting in two states.  Additonally, over 12,000 same-address duplicates are in the system – often due to name typos or missing Social Security issues.  This does not mean there is widespread fraud in our voting rolls.  But, there are enough significant issues on our rolls to call into question any election result. 

Here in North Carolina, 2024’s Supreme Court race saw Democrat Allison Riggs prevail over Republican Jefferson Griffin by just 734 votes statewide.  In his lawsuits, Judge Griffin’s major challenges included these incorrectly maintained voter lists.  North Carolina’s Board of Elections – at that time under the control of Governor Roy Cooper – basically admitted there were errors on the books due to administrative or clerical problems.  Yet, they did nothing about them.  The outcome of which is Justice Riggs is in office – but there will always be questions about the legality of the votes that put her there.

North Carolina has the absolute responsibility and right to maintain – and if needed – purge voter rolls in order to ensure the integrity of elections. As we saw from 2020, when the public does not have faith in the election process, any outcome – no matter how clearly defined – is always suspect.

For the Wilmington Standard, I’m Reuel Sample.  Thanks for listening.