North Carolina has revealed that it has found around 34,000 dead people on its voter rolls after a review. This comes as the state works to verify the citizenship status of registered voters in North Carolina. 

Per WTDV, the North Carolina State Board of Elections made the discovery after conducting a comprehensive data comparison between the state’s voter rolls and the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database.

Sam Hayes, executive director of the State Board of Elections, said in a statement, “While we expected to find some cases, this is higher than we anticipated. The benefit of entering into cross-state and federal database checks is that it allows us to uncover issues like this. Our goal is to use every available and legal tool at our disposal to achieve the most accurate voter rolls possible.”

He added, “Now, we must roll up our sleeves and begin the hard work to act of verifying that every person registered to vote in North Carolina is eligible. Our team, along with our state and federal will do what’s necessary to meet this responsibility.”

Election officials in the state said that the identification of such dead people on its voter rolls does not necessarily mean that illegal votes have been cast in their names. The state board will be working with county election boards to remove the names.

The state board had submitted over 7 million voter records to the SAVE system “as part of its initiative to strengthen the accuracy and integrity of the state’s voter registration list,” a press release stated. “The primary goal of comparing voter registration records with the SAVE database is to identify any non-U.S. citizens on the voter rolls and ensure that only eligible individuals are registered to vote in North Carolina, but we expect that this process will also help identify other anomalies such as duplicate registrations, name mismatches and, as highlighted here, deceased voters.”