NC election leaders call out 'falsehoods' on Fox News

On the Tucker Carlson show on Wednesday, former Trump administration official Russell Vought claimed to have uncovered proof that Democrats in North Carolina are trying to rig elections.

“There is systemic voter fraud being done in North Carolina at the State Board of Elections level and the [North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles] to incentivize illegal immigrants voting in the election,” Vought told guest host Brian Kilmeade. “They just have been part of a system intentionality to ensure that this result is occurring.”

“That is not accurate,” said state elections director Karen Brinson Bell. “It is very frustrating.”

WRAL News contacted Fox News and the Center for Renewing America, Vought's pro-Trump think tank. Neither replied to our request for comment or an interview for this story.

Brinson Bell said Vought is referring to a software glitch that happened in 2016. The motor voter registration software used at the DMV was automatically checking the box saying that the applicant is a citizen. State election officials found the mistake, fixed the software, and reported it to the U.S. district attorney at the time—which was six years ago.

“There is not an issue," Brinson Bell told WRAL News. "It was simply an error and an issue that has been taken care of.”

The evidence Vought claimed to have uncovered is last year’s letter to Brinson Bell from U.S. Attorney Norman Acker, reporting on and closing its investigation into the matter. After much legal wrangling, Acker claimed to have found more than 20 illegally registered voters, but Brinson Bell says he never provided their names so they could be removed from the voter rolls.

“If the U.S. District Attorney does not tell us, then we can't read minds,” Brinson Bell said. “We are working through the methods that we've had in place for years, and that have, you know, proven to be secure and fair, in the conduct of elections in North Carolina.”

On Fox, Vought alleged that the glitch was part of a political strategy by Democrats. He said it was enabled by the grants Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg gave in 2020 to elections boards all over the country.

“The left is so incredibly organized," Vought said. "They swap notes, they tell their organizations how this should be done. They spent $400 million outsourcing the running of local elections to the Democrat Party operatives through 'Zucker-bucks'”

“These types of standard operating procedures are not just being done in North Carolina," he added. "They're being done in every state in which these these dollars are flowing.”

However, the glitch in North Carolina happened under a Republican governor, Pat McCrory, and Zuckerberg’s foundation didn’t give grants to elections boards in 2016.

The state elections board issued a statement this weekend calling Vought’s claims "false information."

“These falsehoods are furthering mistrust in elections,” Brinson Bell said, adding that responding to calls about the allegations is cutting into state and local elections workers' time to prepare for the upcoming midterms.

“We can't go down a rabbit hole every time someone lies about the processes that we have in place,” Brinson Bell said. “And so it's moments like this, when this is just, you know, an exasperated example of someone just completely being wrong in what they're saying, that we have to stop and address it.”