A North Carolina election worker has been charged with illegally altering voter records so hundreds of felons could vote, The News and Observer reports.
Joy Yvette Wilkerson, a former temporary election worker in Granville County, N.C., accessed voter registration records and restored the active voting status of 250 convicted felons in the county. The activity, which was initially discovered by the Granville County Board of Elections last June, is a felony.
"A State Board of Elections spokesman said Wilkerson was hired on a temporary basis in late 2015 through a staffing agency to help Granville County prepare for the presidential election," the Observer reports. "The county's election director discovered the problem in June 2016 and "quickly notified the State Board of Elections, which investigated the matter and recently sent a full report about the case to the district attorney’s office for Granville County for possible prosecution."
The state Republican Party said Wilkerson's situation shows that more needs to be done in relation to voter fraud.
"Incidents like these prove that attempts to encourage illegal voting, violate the law, and manipulate our voting process do exist and must be countered," Robin Hayes, the chairman of the state Republican party, said in a statement.