Because the offense (your Maine conviction) was not vacated. So far all that appears to have happened is that the Maine Supreme Court reduced your lifetime registration period back to 15 years. Since the 15 years was already done, you didn’t have to register in Maine anymore. That is not the same thing as vacating the conviction. Vacating the conviction would remove the conviction entirely as though you had never committed the crime. That is not what Maine has done here. Since the conviction remains, North Carolina will use that conviction to determine what the registration requirement will be in that state. And North Carolina uses a longer period of registration than Maine does.

