Another delay on voting machines, and a move toward hand-marked ballots

The board will have to gather again in about two weeks to make the change official, and Monday's decision delayed for the third time in two months a long-awaited decision to certify new voting equipment. But activists hailed the vote as a move toward more secure elections.

The time to approve new machines ahead of the 2020 elections grows short. State law requires small test runs in actual elections before new machines can be fully deployed, meaning equipment would need to be in place for the November municipal elections to be ready for the March 2020 presidential primaries.

The state legislature may change that law, allowing for simulated election tests instead. It may also delay the coming decertification of touchscreen voting systems that roughly a third of North Carolina counties use now.

Those are supposed to be phased out by the end of the year, which is one of the reasons the pressure is on to certify potential replacement equipment.

If Monday's decision sticks, it would seem to disqualify new equipment on offer from the state's only current voting machine provider, ES&S. The company wants to sell its ExpressVote system here, in addition to its other equipment already certified and in use in North Carolina.

Counties actually decide what system to purchase, but they can buy only from a list of equipment certified by the state board.

The ExpressVote system meets a state requirement for paper ballots, according to state board attorneys, but activists and civic groups have pushed back against the machines because they don't let people fill in bubbles by hand. Instead, voters vote via touchscreen, and the machine spits out paper ballots that record their votes in a barcode.

That bar code is fed into another machine to count the vote.

Two other companies looking for certification in North Carolina, Clear Ballot and Hart InterCivic, use hand-marked paper ballots, as does an older ES&S system already in use in Wake County.

State board members who voted to change the certification rules Monday said they were responding to a public outcry that intensified as the evidence of Russian efforts to tamper in U.S. elections became indisputable.

"Voter trust and confidence in the security and integrity of any voting system that we put in use in North Carolina is absolutely vital," said Stella Anderson, an Appalachian State University professor and a Democrat on the state board who made the key motion Monday night.

Jeff Carmon III, an attorney and another Democrat on the board, seconded her motion.

"All day, I have toyed with one phrase," Carmon said, "and that's 'We the people.'"

That meeting hasn't been set, but board members said they want it held as soon as possible, likely putting it near mid-August.

This is the language that would be added to state certification rules under Anderson's proposal: "An electronically assisted ballot marking device or other ballot marking equipment shall produce human-readable marks on a paper ballot. The voter must be able to verify his or her intent as evidenced by the mark on the ballot. The mark shall be tabulated as the voter's selection."

The last sentence is key. The ExpressVote system ballots not only record votes in the bar codes, they produce a written record of who the voter voted for. But it's the bar code, not the printed words, that are tabulated.

The language runs along the lines of a petition filed with the board earlier this month by Lynn Bernstein, a Cary resident who helped lead the push for hand-marked paper ballots. She and her husband, Nick, were both at Monday's meeting, and both spoke at the public hearing Sunday night.

Republican board member David Black joined with Anderson and Carmon to pass the motion Monday. Board Chairman Robert Cordle, a Democrat, and member Ken Raymond, a Republican, voted against. Both cited the time crunch.

"We have counties that are looking at decertification of equipment," Raymond said. "We have vendors who have been in this process for several years and have run a virtual gauntlet of requirements. ... For us to delay it even further, that's not the right thing to do."

"I agree with you," Cordle said. "I think the counties are going to be running into a real problem."

Anderson acknowledged that the decision adds time, but she said the state has to get this right.

"Our state's been in the media enough," Carmon said. "I can rest well with my vote."

Because ES&S's hand-marked system is already certified in North Carolina, counties already have an option to replace their touchscreens for widespread use. But they also must have machines for people who cannot mark a ballot on their own.

There are only two options certified in North Carolina right now that comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act: The ES&S iVotronic touchscreens that are about to be decertified and the ES&S AutoMARK machine, which board staffers said is no longer manufactured.