The North Carolina State Election Board’s (NCSBE) Investigation Division is investigating an incident involving hundreds of voter registration forms found blowing around near Southgate Plaza in Raleigh last Friday.

A woman told ABC11 that she saw the forms scattered on the ground when she showed up for work.

According to the news report and Patrick Gannon, spokesperson for the NCSBE, three of the forms were filled out.

The report said one was invalid, and the other two were registered voters. ABC11 contacted one of the voters, who said she was concerned that her personal information wasn’t secure.

The woman who found the forms put the completed forms in the mail.

At the time, a nonprofit group was at the Food Lion in the shopping plaza, helping people with voter registration.

Gannon told Carolina Journal in an emailed statement that after seeing the story, State Board staff reached out to the station to get as much information about witnesses and any affected voters as possible, and then forwarded the information to the State Board’s Investigations Division for review. The Investigations Division looks into all potential violations related to voter registration forms. 

He told CJ that there are numerous groups across North Carolina conducting voter registration drives in the months before the 2024 election and the State Board does not have the resources to police these groups on a daily basis.

“However, we remind them that it is a Class 2 misdemeanor if participants in voter registration drives “fail to make a good faith effort” to deliver completed applications to the voter’s county board of elections before the voter registration deadline,” Gannon said.  “See N.C.G.S. § 163-82.6(b)(1). All completed voter registration applications should be returned to the county board of elections in which the voter resides. Unused forms should also be returned to election officials.”

He also said that all eligible NC voters can check their registration to make sure it’s active and up to date on the State Board’s Voter Search tool.

For more information on voter registration, people can check out NCSBE’s frequently asked questions page.