North Carolina is among the vast majority of states working with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to protect voting equipment from cyber threats.
Local elections officials take extensive steps to ensure the security of ballot and voting equipment on site, a state elections official says.
“There are numerous safeguards in place along the way,” Patrick Gannon, a spokesman for the State Board of Elections, said Wednesday.
Twenty-three North Carolina counties use touchscreen voting machines for Election Day voting. The remaining 77 counties use optical scanning equipment; voters mark their paper ballots by coloring in a bubble next to candidates’ names and feed the ballot into an optical scanner.
Another six counties use touchscreen voting equipment at early voting sites.
“Every single one of them go through what we call logic and accuracy testing,” Veronica Degraffenreid, state elections preparation and support manager, said of voting equipment used across the state. That includes touchscreen equipment as well as optical scanning tabulators. The testing begins from the time the ballot is set until voting equipment is used for early voting or Election Day voting, she said.
Reports emerged over the summer that Russian hackers had uncovered an Arizona county election official’s username and password. In addition, Illinois officials said hackers intruded on their election system, although no data was altered.
The Department of Homeland Security and the FBI have provided state elections offices, including North Carolina’s, with updates and information on securing databases and voting equipment.
Degraffenreid and Gannon say voters can be confident North Carolina’s voting equipment is secure. For one reason, the voting machines and tabulators are not connected to the internet.
“When the election officials close the polls, the results are printed out at the voting site,” Degraffenreid said. Printed results and electronic data are brought into a county’s centralized election site, often the board of elections office. Those results are then fed into a machine, she said.
“There’s a process of checks and balances,” Degraffenreid said. That process matches the printed reports with electronic data.
Touchscreen machines are calibrated daily during early voting and on Election Day, Gannon said. “If somebody thinks they’re having a problem, we encourage them to raise their hand or contact an official at a polling site,” he said.
Gannon said voters may accidentally touch the voting screen and mark a ballot unintentionally. He said the error can be corrected, and that each touchscreen machine, in the lower left corner, has a paper record of the votes cast. That paper record can serve as a backup and a means of checking machine accuracy.
On scanning equipment, the paper ballot serves as a backup for the tabulating machine.
After voting closes, randomly selected precincts are audited for accuracy by matching paper ballots or records with the voting machine or tabulator totals, Gannon said.
Procedures are in place to keep equipment at early voting sites secure.
“There is a cover that closes over the machine,” Gannon said. “That cover can be secured or taped closed.” He said people from either party can sign the tape so that it acts as a seal. Any tampering would be evident, he said.
In addition, polling places with early voting machines must be locked overnight, Gannon said. Only authorized elections officials have keys.