The Modernization of Election Data Systems (MEDS) Commission held its inaugural meeting on Tuesday afternoon.
The bipartisan, 22-member commission was created to help bring North Carolina’s election management system up to date.
North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) executive director Sam Hayes announced the joint initiative with state Auditor Dave Boliek’s office in October to solicit input on the state’s Election Information Management System (SEIMS) and Campaign Finance Reporting Software, both of which he said were outdated.
“I take the job that the legislature delegated to the state auditor’s office seriously, and I’m not content to sit up in Raleigh and just be Mr. State Auditor,” Boliek said. “I want to actually try to do something to help the people of the state of North Carolina, and I want to do so in a way that is transparent and helpful to people. And 1998 is when the same system was created. Let’s remind ourselves that that predates social media, predates digital ads, predates online small donor fundraising, all social media platforms, certainly AI-assisted analytics, public portals, cloud services, and several other technologies that have since been adopted into everyday use, including the iPhone, so things have certainly changed.”
Hayes told the commission that SEIMS was cutting-edge when it was developed in 1998, but much of its underlying technology is dated and increasingly difficult to maintain, update, and secure. And the fact that the SEIMS code is written in a “dead language” and will cease to function within the next two years also prompted the need for modernization and replacement.
He said the $15 million appropriation that he requested from the General Assembly should cover Phases 1 and 2 of the modernization plan, adding that he would reveal his recommendation for a new vendor for a new SEIMS system at a State Board of Elections meeting on Wednesday.
Among the goals that Hayes noted include: following transitioning legacy client based components to secure web-based modules, improving accessibility for counties, reducing infrastructure demands, allowing for faster deployment of updates when laws or procedures change, strengthening security and systems availability with updated architecture and modern code to protect sensitive voter data, reducing vulnerabilities and improving performance, enhancing data management and reporting tools to enable counties to generate reports more efficiently, responding more quickly to public records requests, managing election data with greater consistency, improving data integration and validation processes (particularly geographic and address validation to ensure accurate precinct and district assignment), more streamlined election setup, and conducting extensive testing training and user feedback with county elections officials in order to ensure the system supports their operational needs.
Modernization, he said, will be delivered in phases over the next two years.
“I see it as a bridge to an entirely new system, which will be the standard for the nation,” Hayes said. “I appreciate the partnership with the office of the State Auditor and the guidance of this commission. I’m confident that our efforts together will strengthen election administration, improve security, and reinforce public confidence in the electoral process.”
Boliek stressed that the full upgrade will take some time and that he expects to see the Campaign Finance Reporting software overhauled by the summer of 2027.
State Board of Elections campaign finance director Lindsey Wakely said under state law, certain committees are required to file all of their disclosure reports electronically.
The current campaign finance system relies heavily on a downloadable, standalone application used by treasurers, rather than a web-based portal. The software, developed in the early 2000s, runs only on Windows and does not work on Apple devices, so a Windows computer needs to be purchased. After downloading the application, entering transactions, and completing the entire process to file that report, the treasurer of the committee or board is required to create the report and then email the disclosure report to the NCSBE, along with a signed certification document.
But there is a challenge with disclosure reports that must be signed, Wakely said, as the system wasn’t designed for that. So, a workaround is needed, creating more work. All in all, she said it could take up to a day for a report to appear online and be available to the public.
Wakely said her division would like to see a modern system, fashioned after TurboTax, where there is a login that is provided to the treasurer who is able to log into a website, type in that information, sign the report on the website, and hit submit, so it could be uploaded to the website as quickly as possible.
Recommendations were then heard from Maggie Barlow of Maven Strategies regarding a cloud-based service, which she said would eliminate the need for some third-party vendors.
Denise Cheney, North Carolina Democratic Party treasurer, said the system should be online, with no software required.
“Sometimes, the treasurer in the committee doesn’t have the money to buy a computer for the committee, and the committee’s data is on a personal computer of someone in their home, and so when things transition, especially if it’s not a very acrimonious transition, sometimes data can just disappear,” she said.
One of the commission members, Brooks Fuller, policy director at Common Cause North Carolina, said there’s a tremendous amount of bipartisan and nonpartisan agreement among those on the commission about how they access, share, and understand systems, and that they hope it can be conveyed to the public.
“So, one of the most important things that I want to be sure that we do on this commission is make it possible for the people of North Carolina to have full, unfettered, clear, comprehensible access to the information that they need to understand how campaigns are financed, how candidates conduct reporting, how elections run in this state,” he said. “It is something that the layperson, that the people of North Carolina, could be so much more involved in the democratic process, so much better informed if they understood all the hard work that folks, especially our directors in our counties, deal with all the time, and folks in Raleigh as well.”
Commission member Dr. Andy Jackson, director of the John Locke Foundation’s Civitas Center for Public Integrity, told the commission he believes everything else would fall into place if the campaign finance reporting system issues were resolved.
“If I want to know what kind of outside spending is being done on behalf of candidate Y, I could access that with a few clicks,” Jackson said. “Right now, it takes a lot of digging to get all those independent expenditures up and out, and then have a reasonable expectation of, well, this is how much is being spent on the candidate’s behalf. So if we have a system that can get us that relatively quickly, I think that same system would solve a lot of other problems on the way.
NCSBE Secretary Stacey “Four” Eggers IV told the commission these issues have kept him awake at night for a long time.
“It’s exciting to see this happen because for the longest time it was a myriad of reasons as to why this could not be done, and to see this group come together with such energy and such a focus is just a wonderful thing. And it’s just a terrific opportunity for us to get this right, so that for the next 20 years, we’ll come back and visit this system again. But I’m excited to see this come together and appreciate the increased transparency and increased efficiency,” he said.
While NCSBE Chair Francis De Luca thanked Boliek, he doubted that everyone would be happy with the results.
“It is a thankless job,” he said. “Nobody will be satisfied with what we come up with, but it’ll be better than what we have. So thank you for doing this, and good luck.”
Boliek replied, “I’m optimistic everybody’s gonna be satisfied. We’re all gonna Kumbaya and be happy that we got the best system in the United States.”
Boliek appointed Jackson and Fuller to co-chair a campaign finance subcommittee.
The next meeting is March 18.
