RALEIGH, N.C. — Elections officials purged Mark Meadows, chief of staff for former President Donald Trump and a former North Carolina congressman, from state voter rolls this week after a Macon County official confirmed he was also registered to vote in Virginia.
Macon County Board of Elections Director Melanie Thibault said in an email to The Charlotte Observer Meadows was registered in Macon County, where he voted in 2020, and in Virginia, where he voted in 2021. The story was previously reported by the Asheville Citizen Times.
State law dictates a person who leaves North Carolina and votes in another state loses residency and is no longer eligible to vote in the state. The Virginia Department of Elections said in an email the agency does not release records confirming whether somebody is registered to vote in the state.
The statute that led to Meadows’ removal specifically mandates if a person “goes into another state, county, municipality, precinct, ward, or other election district, or into the District of Columbia, and while there exercises the right of a citizen by voting in an election, that person shall be considered to have lost residence in that State, county, municipality, precinct, ward, or other election district from which that person removed.”
Thibault said she has received no challenge about removing Meadows from the voter rolls.
The removal of Meadows from the North Carolina voter rolls is just the latest in a string of voting controversies for the former congressman. A New Yorker article in March found Meadows claimed in his voter registration to live in a mobile home he did not own.
The magazine found that there was little evidence of Meadows ever visiting the mobile home.
He registered at that address in September 2020 and voted by absentee ballot in that year’s general election, according to his voter record.
The State Bureau of Investigation also announced in mid-March it was investigating Meadows for voter fraud following the New Yorker’s report.
Meadows has been a proponent of the unsubstantiated theory that Joe Biden won the presidential election because of widespread voter fraud. He also failed to comply with a subpoena from the congressional committee investigating the Capitol riot on Jan 6, 2021.
Ben Williamson, Meadows’ spokesman, declined to comment for this story.
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