A viral social media post seen by over 100,000 users suggests that North Carolina handled more than a million duplicate voter registrations during the recent election cycle.
“Governor Josh Stein won North Carolina by 828,187 votes. North Carolina processed 1,031,350 duplicate registrations,” wrote Shiloh Marx, president of the Integrity First Alliance, in a July 20 post on X.
The Integrity First Alliance advocates for states to routinely update and maintain clean voter rolls. Marx’s commentary pointed to the margin of victory for Democratic Gov. Josh Stein over Republican challenger Mark Robinson in North Carolina’s 2024 gubernatorial race.
The claim quickly sparked confusion online, with several users questioning whether individuals had managed to cast ballots twice.
This raises two central questions: Did North Carolina officials genuinely process over a million duplicate registrations, and did these figures impact the outcome of the 2024 elections?
The short answer is no.
The figure of 1,031,350 originates from a report released by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), an independent federal entity that offers guidance on running elections. The document outlines how the 2024 general election was managed nationwide.
According to Kristen Muthig, a spokesperson for the commission, that specific statistic reflects the number of already-registered North Carolina voters who submitted new registration paperwork that contained identical personal details.
“These can be registrations submitted by people who did not realize they were already registered to vote or who submitted multiple registration transactions through different modes (e.g., submitted a registration with Murad exact same information through the mail and online),” Muthig explained via email, directing further inquiries to state election authorities.
Patrick Gannon, a spokesperson for the North Carolina State Board of Elections, noted that duplicate forms frequently land on election officials’ desks when active voters fill out new paperwork at the Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) or participate in voter registration drives.
North Carolina is far from unique in this regard. The federal report identified similar numbers across the country, noting nearly 2.2 million duplicate registrations in California, roughly 1.9 million in Michigan, and about 1 million in Virginia. The report emphasizes that many registration transactions handled by states do not actually result in a new record being created or an existing one being updated.
State records show that between 2023 and August 2024, local election boards removed more than 747,000 ineligible records from the state’s database. As the state board highlighted in September 2024, continuous roll maintenance is standard practice, though certain removals—such as those dependent on official death certificates—can take time to process.
Ultimately, list maintenance catches up to clear out ineligible names, though election officials emphasize that the mere presence of outdated records on voter rolls does not equate to voter fraud.
While the DMV may technically “process” duplicate paperwork, Gannon confirmed that these duplicates were never added to the official active rolls. Consequently, the figures cited by Marx had zero impact on the 2024 election results.
Here is how the verification procedure operates in practice:
- When county election offices receive registration documents from the DMV, local staff enter the data into a centralized statewide database.
- The system automatically cross-references details—such as name, birthdate, address, and driver’s license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number—to detect existing files.
- If potential duplicates are flagged, staff investigate to verify if they belong to the same individual. When a match is confirmed, the older registration is retired.
- Even in the rare scenario where an individual remains registered twice, robust safeguards prevent double voting. Electronic pollbooks track who has already cast a ballot at every early voting and Election Day location. Anyone attempting to check in a second time is blocked from casting a standard ballot and must instead use a provisional ballot, which county officials review afterward to determine validity.
The bipartisan state board unanimously certified the 2024 election results, and subsequent audits across the state uncovered no evidence of widespread irregularities.
“These duplicate numbers have absolutely no relationship to the difference in vote totals for candidates in a contest,” Gannon stated. “Unfortunately, this post will serve only to mislead unsuspecting readers who don’t understand the process and hurt voter confidence in elections.”
Marx did not respond to requests for comment.
Our ruling
Marx claimed that North Carolina “processed 1,031,350 duplicate registrations,” drawing a comparison to Stein’s winning margin in the 2024 gubernatorial race. This framing implied that voters had the opportunity to cast ballots twice or that duplicate entries influenced the election outcome.
Data from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission shows that over 1 million individuals who were already registered in North Carolina submitted an additional registration form ahead of the 2024 vote.
While those forms were logged by administrative agencies, they were not added to the active voter rolls a second time. State election authorities confirm these administrative duplicates had no connection to the outcome of the governor’s race or any other contest, and post-election audits have found no proof of systemic fraud.
Because the statement contains a kernel of truth while omitting essential context that prevents a proper understanding of how voter rolls are managed, this claim is rated Half True.