NC election officials won’t let GOP lawmakers inspect voting machines. Here’s why.
Republican state lawmakers are trying to pursue theories about voter fraud here, but they recently ran into a large obstacle: The North Carolina State Board of Elections.
Last week, the state’s top elections official sent a harshly worded letter to the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus. Led by Rep. Keith Kidwell, a Republican from coastal Beaufort County, the group’s members include more than a third of the House GOP caucus.
Kidwell and the Freedom Caucus have been asking to open up and inspect voting machines to see if they contain modems. Modems could connect to the internet and thus potentially allow votes to be changed remotely.
But that’s already banned under North Carolina law, and there has been no indication of the elections here being rigged, either by illegal modems or by any other means. The state has already finished an official audit of the 2020 election, as it does after every election.
“The State Board has received no credible evidence that the certified results are not accurate, and elected officials from both sides of the aisle have stated that the 2020 general election in North Carolina was conducted fairly,” state elections director Karen Brinson Bell wrote to Kidwell last week. “We will not allow misinformation about voting systems or any other aspect of elections to dictate our priorities in administering elections.”
Kidwell, however, said in an interview Wednesday that he is confident there was at least some fraud in the 2020 elections. He just wants to find out how much, he said, and who is behind it.
On Facebook, his group has suggested that it may actually be state or local elections officials who are committing fraud, with posts like this one on July 2: “The House Freedom Caucus is now focused on BOE officials and the specific precincts themselves. We absolutely think tampering happens in North Carolina.”
He downplayed the Facebook rhetoric on Wednesday, however, saying, “We’ve never said anything about any individual officials.”
The fight between the GOP lawmakers and the state elections board — which has a 3-2 Democratic majority — is unlikely to end anytime soon. Kidwell announced a Thursday morning press conference to detail his claims further.
In addition to the letter in which Brinson Bell accuses him of spreading misinformation, election board spokesman Pat Gannon also recently emailed every county-level elections official in the state. Not only should they not let any Freedom Caucus member inspect voting machines, he said, they should also report any efforts to do so.
“Please contact the State Board immediately, either myself or the legal team, if you receive a request to inspect or otherwise access voting equipment,” he wrote.
Details of the attempted audit
The Freedom Caucus’ request comes as conservatives continue trying to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election in which Joe Biden, a Democrat, beat incumbent Republican Donald Trump. For instance, GOP operatives have conducted a controversial audit of voting machines in Arizona that election security experts have cast doubts on but that conservative media has lauded.
During the election’s aftermath last year, House Speaker Tim Moore traveled with fellow Republican Rep. Kelly Hastings to Pennsylvania, where they joined a “Stop The Steal” effort by the Trump campaign. That was part of Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the election, although Moore later told WRAL that he came away from his time there believing that Trump couldn’t prove his claims. Moore is not a listed member of the Freedom Caucus, but Hastings is.
When asked if Moore supported the Freedom Caucus’ attempts to audit North Carolina voting machines or if he agreed that there was fraud in the elections here, Moore’s office didn’t answer the question directly but provided a statement that said: “We should do everything we can to ensure fair and free elections” and called for voter ID requirements.
To Kidwell, the attempt to open up North Carolina’s voting machines is well within his rights as a legislator. He pointed to a state law that says any state agency or department has to give “all information and all data within their possession, or ascertainable from their records,” to any lawmaker who asks for it.
It’s unclear if that would apply to requests to physically open and inspect voting machines, but Kidwell said he’s confident it does.
He also questioned why the elections board would want to stop his audit from happening. If people don’t have trust in elections, he said, that’s bad for democracy.
“When they feel like their vote’s not going to count, so they sit at home, that’s voter suppression,” he said.
Brinson Bell, however, said in her letter to Kidwell that distrust in elections was actually part of the reason why she was denying his request to conduct his audit.
“We do not intend to partake in, nor perpetuate, myths and falsehoods about voting systems or elections,” she wrote in denying his request to inspect voting machines. “To that end, we’ve created a “Combating Misinformation” webpage to respond to inaccuracies about elections, which greatly affect voter confidence.”
Could audit create security risks?
In addition to the concerns about spreading misinformation, Brinson Bell said they also declined Kidwell’s request because the U.S. Department of Homeland Security advises against allowing the manipulation of voting machines.
Having untrained people open up voting machines and start poking around would be more likely to create security issues than find any, she said. She also cited a top federal elections security official, Geoff Hale, who wrote that letting non-experts open up and try to analyze voting machines “increases the possibility of mischaracterization or misinterpretation of the capabilities or security of those systems.”
She also told Kidwell his plan would probably cause any machines they opened up to be ruined and required to be replaced — likely at the expense of taxpayers.
Brinson Bell cast doubt on a claim she said Kidwell had made that ES&S, the company that makes virtually all of the voting machines used in North Carolina, said it would not charge for any security recertification needed after the audit.
“We have spoken to several top ES&S officials, and they stated that they were unaware of any commitment by the company to take any accessed machines back to their headquarters for recertification,” Brinson Bell wrote. “Voting systems vendors do not have the ability to recertify voting equipment. If the equipment is tampered with, it must be replaced.”
For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Under the Dome politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it at link.chtbl.com/underthedomenc or wherever you get your podcasts.
This story was originally published July 14, 2021 at 7:25 PM with the headline "NC election officials won’t let GOP lawmakers inspect voting machines. Here’s why.."
