When Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Weapons Treaty in 1987, Reagan said, “We have listened to the wisdom of an old Russian maxim: trust but verify.” The idea behind the phrase is that you should proceed with goodwill and not assume that your counterpart is cheating but that you must also confirm the facts for yourself.
Verifying that elections are conducted legally and impartially is crucial to maintaining voters’ trust, which is why we have election audits. The North Carolina State Board of Elections (SBE) states that audits can help “detect problems such as equipment tampering, ballot stuffing, and voting machine or counting errors.” To that end, it conducts audits after every primary and general election as required by law.
Those audits and post-election recounts are geared primarily toward confirming that the number of votes matches election official’s records. Matching numbers is of little comfort, however, if the process that created those numbers is flawed through malfeasance or mistakes. The Georgetown Law Technology Review found that if an audit cannot confirm that election procedures create a trustworthy record of voter intent, “the audit might be likely to confirm the incorrect outcome or to change a correct outcome into an incorrect outcome.”
Concern over how elections are conducted breeds mistrust of the results of those elections. A poll taken just after the 2024 election found that 26% of voters, including 43% of Democrats, did not believe the election was held freely and fairly.
That is why some states have adopted what the National Conference of State Legislatures calls “procedural audits.” Also known as “forensic” or “performance” audits, they are “a check on the human processes” of election administration, such as voter registration record maintenance and ballot chain-of-custody practices.
Utah adopted performance audits in 2023, producing an 83-page report on state and local election officials’ conduct in the 2024 election. That audit uncovered critical flaws, including local election officials not properly executing post-election audits, insufficient state oversight of local election officials, and cases of poor ballot control and tracking.
The audit report made 20 recommendations, including procedural changes for county and state election officials. It also suggested that the legislature alter state laws to improve election integrity and streamline election administration.
In addition, the audit uncovered that election officials in two southern Utah counties “failed to comply with state law and put the integrity of multiple elections at risk in 2024.” Officials in both counties pledged to implement the audit’s recommendations to improve election security.
North Carolina should join the growing number of states adopting election performance audits. Those audits should include several elements like Utah’s.
First, the audits should cover all procedures over a two-year period, not just individual primaries and elections. That would better identify systemic problems.
Second, they should include the SBE executive director’s point-by-point response to the audit’s recommendations, including areas of disagreement. Those responses would provide context for the findings and help clarify what changes are needed.
Third, they should be conducted by an outside entity to remove what a John Locke Foundation review of the 2020 election called the “inherent conflict of interest involved with election bodies auditing themselves.”
Where in state government would an independent election auditing unit be housed? The natural place is the Office of the State Auditor. Current State Auditor Dave Boliek has already expressed interest in his office conducting election performance audits, something it already does every year for the Department of Transportation.
Implementing election performance audits should have bipartisan appeal and support from both sides of the election security debate. Those who believe elections in North Carolina are run well should welcome the opportunity to prove that through an outside audit, while those who do not trust election officials should welcome an independent body having the authority to oversee their work. Performance audits could also help legislators better adjust election laws and budgets.
Even election officials may eventually welcome performance audits if they are conducted in the spirit of fixing problems rather than affixing blame, as they would help them do their jobs better.
You do not have to assume maliciousness on the part of election officials to want independent election performance audits. We should trust our election officials, and performance audits to verify their work can help us do so.