Republicans settle with DNC in lawsuit that sought to purge 225,000 NC voters

Kyle Ingram, The News & Observer (Raleigh) on Feb 16, 2026

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A Republican-led effort to purge roughly 225,000 North Carolina voters from the state’s rolls would be largely abandoned under a settlement agreement that national Democrats and Republicans filed in federal court on Monday.

The deal between the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee must still be approved by a judge for it to become final.

“While the RNC has waged an all-out assault on voters in North Carolina, we have been fighting like hell to protect the sacred right to vote — and we will never back down,” DNC Chair Ken Martin said in a statement. “This latest victory is a win for Americans and yet another blow to the Republicans’ scheme to disenfranchise voters ahead of the midterm elections.”

Representatives for the RNC and NC GOP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Under the settlement, the RNC agrees to drop its effort to purge the contested voters in exchange for the State Board of Elections continuing to carry out its “Registration Repair” program.

Through the program, which the board approved last year, the state is contacting North Carolinians with incomplete voter registrations and asking them to provide the missing information.

Voters who fail to do so could ultimately have their ballots thrown out.

Years of court fights

Monday’s settlement stems from a 2024 lawsuit in which the Republican National Committee sued the State Board of Elections, arguing that the agency improperly allowed a quarter-million voters to register to vote without providing the required identification information.

The RNC asked that those 225,000 voters be removed from the rolls just months before the 2024 election, but a federal judge appointed by President Donald Trump rejected the request.

Since then, the lawsuit has largely laid dormant — but similar battles over voter eligibility continued.

After narrowly losing to Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs in the 2024 state Supreme Court race, Republican Jefferson Griffin began a six-month legal battle in which he attempted to throw out over 65,000 ballots cast in the race.

Among the reasons he provided for his unprecedented campaign was that some of the contested voters did not have a driver’s license number or Social Security number in the state’s database — the same argument the RNC had made in its voter purge lawsuit.

Griffin’s efforts were ultimately unsuccessful, with the same Trump-appointed judge that rejected the RNC’s lawsuit writing that the candidate could not “change the rules of the game after it had been played.”

But the debate over North Carolina’s voter rolls was still not over.

In May 2025, Trump’s Department of Justice sued the State Board of Elections over the incomplete registrations.

The board, which came under Republican control that same month, later entered into a settlement with the DOJ which resulted in the creation of the “Registration Repair” program.

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