Lobby for Change

Who to Contact

North Carolina’s Secretary of State does not oversee the State Board of Elections. Oversight is provided by:

Elections & Ethics Law Committee in the House

Joint Legislative Elections Oversight Committee

Contact these committees to lobby for changes to current election laws.

County Board of Elections and County Election Directors

Contact them to ask that the following best practices be put in place.

Ask legislators to make changes to laws or procedures

1. All county Board of Elections shall post video of meetings and meeting minutes on their county BOE website so the public may stay informed of public business. Minutes shall include public comments and all documents associated with the meetings as part of the record. 

2. Public shall be notified of the date/time of all pre-election acceptance and logic & accuracy testing of voting equipment. Public shall be allowed to meaningfully observe testing and receive copies of test plans, test reports and log files of all pre-election testing. 

3. All boxes of ballots and precinct scanner (usb) removable media picked up by the chief judge prior to the election shall have serial numbered tamper evident seals affixed to them. Serial numbered tamper evident seals shall be verified and recorded by a bi-partisan precinct team at pre election pick-up of election materials, again at the precinct on the morning of the election prior to polls opening, and again as part of poll closing procedures. 

4. Precinct chief judges shall boot up precinct scanners and print zero tapes no earlier than 30 minutes prior to the start of the polls opening. Boot up and zero tape printing procedures shall be conducted in the presence of a bi-partisan team of precinct judges.

5. When ballots are removed from the precinct scanner bin, they shall be immediately placed in a container and a serial numbered tamper evident seal shall be signed, and affixed to the container; the serial number shall be logged into chain-of-custody records by a bi-partisan team consisting of the chief judge and two precinct judges. 

6. The chief judge shall publicly post a precinct poll tape at the close of polls (currently this is optional). The entire poll tape(s) shall be publicly viewable from outside of the precinct polling location for at least 24 hours (outward facing window). At the county BOE on election night, the public shall be allowed to view and document totals of any precinct poll tapes that were not posted at the close of polls at a precinct.  

7. Early voting tape totals and absentee ballot tape totals shall not be totaled and printed until the close of polls on election night. 

8. There shall be bi-partisan chain of custody of all election materials transported back to the county on election night. For counties that bring election materials to transport vans throughout the county, they must sign over materials to another bi-partisan team who will transport the materials to the BOE. 

9. The public shall be allowed to observe election materials being returned and inventoried at the BOE. Comparison of uploaded precinct totals to poll tapes shall be conducted on election night in full view of the public. This is a critical step in the vote counting/aggregation process. 

10. Absentee, provisional, overseas absentee, military ballots, and replicated absentee email ballots shall be approved/not approved by the board in public view, at which time the approved ballot envelopes are to be opened, and ballots scanned in a continually observable process within full view of the board and public. 

Unanswered questions from the State Board of Elections

Question: NC performs post-election tabulation audits, but are they robust enough? Do they even meet the requirements in NC General Statute?

§ 163-182.1. Principles and rules for counting official ballots.

The sample chosen by the State Board shall be of one or more full precincts, full counts of mailed absentee ballots, full counts of one or more one-stop early voting sites, or a combination. The size of the sample of each category shall be chosen to produce a statistically significant result and shall be chosen after consultation with a statistician.

Question: Who was the statistician that was consulted to come up with auditing only 2 precincts/county? Where is their recommendation report?

Answer: The State Board of Elections is refusing to disclose that information. My public records request for this information has gone unanswered for a year!
FINALLY - THE REPORT HAS BEEN RELEASED - send thoughts/comments to transparentelectionsnc(at)gmail.com with Subject: 2012 UNC Statistician Report
2012 UNC Statistician Report

Question: Why is the public not allowed into some county BOEs on election night in order to inspect/photograph the early voting poll tapes and absentee poll reports (these are printed at 2pm on election day and seen by BOE members and staff at 2pm)? Why do some counties follow the law and allow the public to be present to observe on election night and others do not?

Answer: The State Board of Elections refuses to answer these questions. For the 2020 General Election, Wake County BOE refused to allow the public to observe on election night citing “security concerns”, but also refused to allow the live-stream camera (which was already up during the meeting on election day) to remain on during election night.

Current Issues: Election Equipment & Voting Systems

Map of NC counties showing current and past voting systems

please note that all scanners are displayed as “optical”. The M100 is optical and does not take ballot images. The DS200 is a digital scanner and does have the ability to capture ballot images.

https://verifiedvoting.org/verifier/#mode/navigate/map/ppEquip/mapType/normal/year/2020/state/37

March 17, 2021 TENC’s open letter to County BOEs and County Commissioners urging them to reconsider the purchase of the ES&S ExpressVote machines for NC

BACKGROUND

Right now counties are “upgrading” their election systems, but this “upgrade” may be detrimental to North Carolina voters. Currently, most voters mark a paper ballot with a pen (hand-marked paper ballots). Most voters in NC who need assistance to mark their ballot use the AutoMark ballot marking device. It is an ADA compliant device that allows voters to insert their paper ballot and make selections through an interface using audio, enlarged print or sip/puff controls. The AutoMark simply fills in the bubbles that the voter has selected.

Most counties use systems made by ES&S and some want to stay with that company, The great news is that the AutoMark is still being sold and serviced by the NC vendor. ES&S also has a newer type ballot marking assistive device called the ExpressVote. It doesn’t use a hand-marked paper ballot like every voter uses. Instead, a voter would get a card at check-in and insert the card into an ExpressVote machine. After the voter has made their selection, a ballot summary card printed on thermal paper is generated. The “votes” on this card are in the form of a barcode - the scanner/tabulator only counts the barcode and ignores the human readable portion. With this system, voters would be unable to verify if the barcode matches the human-readable portion of the ballot. This summary card is not even the same size/shape as the ballot that everyone else is issued. This could compromise voter secrecy if there are only 1-2 voters in a precinct that need this assistive technology.

The other system that has been certified in NC is made by a company called Hart Intercivic. Their voting system also has an ADA approved device. Most voters would still use a hand-marked paper ballot, but voters needing assistance would use the Verity Writer. This device allows a voter to use audio, enlarged print or a sip/puff interface. The ballot that the Verity Writer produces is a ballot that looks just like the hand-marked paper ballots that most voters use. This helps maintain ballot secrecy.