Nearly one million names have been removed from the voter rolls in the key battleground state of North Carolina over the course of the last 20 months, an announcement which could prove critical in the coming presidential election.

As reported by the Daily Caller, the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) made its announcement on Thursday. When broken down by the various reasons for removal, the highest amount of purged voters, just under 290,000, were voters who moved to a different county but failed to register their change of address. Over 246,000 were removed for failing to participate in the 2016 and 2020 elections. The third-highest amount of removed voters were deceased voters, at just under 131,000.

In considerably smaller numbers, other voters who were removed included those who moved out of the state completely (31,000), accidentally registered twice (27,000), were convicted of felonies (19,000), and voters who requested to be removed from the rolls (2,300).

The massive purge followed a lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the North Carolina GOP (NCGOP) in August, which claimed that the state had not fulfilled its duties by removing ineligible names from the voter rolls.

“Confidence in the integrity of our electoral processes is essential in the functioning of our participatory democracy,” the lawsuit declared. “Voter fraud drives honest citizens out of the democratic process and breeds distrust of our government. Voters who fear their legitimate votes will be outweighed by fraudulent ones will feel disenfranchised.”

North Carolina is one of several states that has cracked down on voter fraud in the aftermath of the suspicious and widely-criticized 2020 election. Since 2023, voters in the Tarheel State have been required to show a form of photographic identification in order to vote, and also implemented a law mandating that only American citizens can vote.

The state is considered one of the seven major battleground states in the coming election. Former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, is expected to win the state against Vice President Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), having previously won it in 2016 and 2020; he won the state by a 3.66% margin against Hillary Clinton in 2016 (a margin of roughly 180,000 votes), then won it by a narrower margin of 1.34% against Joe Biden in 2020 (just over 70,000 votes). His victory in the state in 2020 was considered a major upset, as virtually all pollsters indicated that Biden would win.