New elections loom without decision on voting machines

Separate legislation is also moving through the General Assembly to require each of the companies that want to sell voting machines in North Carolina to put up a $17 million bond, a change that at least one competing vendor sees as a way to discourage competition and the current vendor says is only fair.

State officials asked the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to assist with that and report back on any potentially troubling ties, state board member Stella Anderson said Friday.

"I doubt (they find anything), but you never know," Anderson said.

With these questions delaying a decision from the State Board of Elections on just what sorts of machines local election offices can buy, it makes sense to push the touchscreen ban back to December 2021, Rep. Julia Howard, R-Davie, said this week. Howard is sponsoring House Bill 851, which would delay the state's ban on "direct record electronic" voting machines, or DREs, that don't use paper ballots.

Howard said she'd prefer to phase out DREs as planned, "but we need to know what they're going to phase in."

Roughly a third of voters in North Carolina use DREs to vote, including voters in two of the state's largest counties: Mecklenburg and Guilford. The rest of the state, including Wake County, generally uses paper ballots.

Touchscreen DREs fell out of favor, in part, because they don't have a hand-marked paper trail. In addition to the electronic record, they create a tape that looks something like a cash register receipt, but the state has said this doesn't satisfy the paper ballot requirement lawmakers laid out in a series of 2013 voting reforms.

ES&S, a company based in Nebraska, is the only voting machine vendor certified to sell equipment in North Carolina at the moment, and it has paper ballot systems. Two others are hoping to get into the game: Hart InterCivic of Texas and Clear Ballot, headquartered in Massachusetts.

State law required ES&S to put up a bond or letter of credit worth some $17 million to keep its certification and sell to the county governments that actually buy voting machines. The idea is to have an insurance policy to cover the cost of a new statewide election should voting machines fail.

The company has asked state leaders to require that same bonding from all potential vendors before the state board signs off on their equipment, and the requirement is baked into a much longer regulatory reform bill awaiting final passage now at the General Assembly, Senate Bill 553.

The new bond language was backed by the House earlier this legislative session but not by the Senate. It's one of several issues the two sides may negotiate over as the overall bill is finalized.

Competing companies have argued that the upfront requirement limits competition, because setting up a surety bond of this size costs hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, and potential vendors might not be willing to do that without a contract in hand.

Every voting machine awaiting certification from the state board produces a paper ballot, but controversy remains over just what those ballots are. Some aren't hand-marked, but the system generates a printout with a bar code recording how someone voted.

A number of activists and the immediate past general counsel for the State Board of Elections, Josh Lawson, are pushing back against the method. Lynn Bernstein, a Cary woman who has done extensive research on voting equipment options, filed a formal request with the state board on Friday, calling on members to pick systems with paper ballots people can read.

"Voters should be able to verify their votes," Bernstein said in her letter.

Board Chairman Robert Cordle said he'd defer comment on the barcode issue until the five-member board meets to decide on the vendors. It's unclear when that will be.

Anderson said she's leaning toward hand-marked ballots.

"I am very concerned, in the age in which we're operating ... about a move towards greater software dependence," she said. "Voter verification is inherent in a hand-marked ballot."