NC Election Worker Indicted for Altering Voter Registrations

A former temporary election worker in North Carolina has been indicted for altering voter registration records:

The State Bureau of Elections said in a news release on Tuesday that says 41-year-old Joy Yvette Wilkerson of Henderson faces charges of unlawful voter registration and unlawful altering of voter registrations. Wilkerson was indicted by a Granville County grand jury on Tuesday. . . . 

In June 2016, county elections director Tonya Burnette found in a review that voter registration records were changed without authorization. Burnette told the elections board, which investigated the matter and sent a full report to the district attorney's office.

The former worker attempted to alter as many as 250 registrations to allow ineligible felons to vote:

Joy Yvette Wilkerson, 41, of Henderson is facing multiple counts of fraudulently altering voter registrations, which is a felony charge. 

According to a Granville County Sheriff’s Department report, the county’s Board of Elections discovered the fraudulent activity last June and contacted law enforcement. The report says Wilkerson accessed the county’s voter registration database and restored – or tried to restore – active voting status to 250 convicted felons who had been removed from voter rolls while they served their sentence. 

North Carolina law bans convicted felons from voting while serving an active sentence – in prison or on probation – but their rights are restored after their sentence is complete.

This story illustrates how important it is for states to properly vet and train election officials, even temporary ones, and have procedures in place to protect against tampering with voter registration records or ballots (as temporary election workers did in Florida last year) and how susceptible the election system is to manipulation by a person with bad intent.  But the diligence of the North Carolina officials in catching and investigating this fraud should be commended.