In late August, the Department of Homeland Security gave the North Carolina State Board of Elections six days to decide whether to take an invitation-only, “exciting opportunity” to root out noncitizens from its voter roll.

If the elections board took the deal, it would hand over some or all of its voter roll to the federal agency, including registered voters’ names, birthdays and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers. In exchange, the agency would check the voter roll against databases maintained by DHS, the Department of Justice and the Social Security Administration to determine whether any noncitizens were illegally on the voter rolls.

The Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program was originally designed to verify immigration status for those seeki

See Full Page