How safe is your vote in NC? Partisans on both sides of the aisle agree
The warnings are ominous: ballot fraud, voter intimidation, armed poll watchers, cyber-attacks, disruptions in postal service.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly raised the prospect of election fraud and cast doubts on whether he’ll abide by the results. Federal authorities are preparing for the possibility of Election Day violence. All this amid a pandemic that has even infiltrated the White House.
It’s enough to test a voter’s confidence.
“Personally I still hold out hope that American institutions are fairly and impartially run, though it gets more and more difficult to have that faith,” said Michael Stewart, 58, an independent voter from Charlotte.
So just how confident — or worried — should North Carolina voters be?
“I have 100% confidence that Republicans and Democrats, your neighbors and fellow citizens are going to make sure your vote counts,” said Damon Circosta, Democratic chairman of the State Board of Elections.
At least 420,000 North Carolinians already have voted. That’s out of more than 1.2 million who have requested absentee ballots. Early in-person voting starts Oct. 15 and runs through the end of the month. Friday is the voter registration deadline though people also can register at early voting sites.
Nearly 43,000 South Carolina voters have cast absentee or in-person ballots, according to Chris Whitmire of the state’s Election Commission. Early voting there started Monday and runs through Nov. 2. The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday reinstated an S.C. requirement that a witness sign a voter’s absentee ballot envelope.
In North Carolina, COVID-19 has led to changes in how voters cast ballots by mail and in person. Some of the changes have been embroiled in a series of 32 ongoing lawsuits against the state board.
Legal challenges aside, state Republican chairman Michael Whatley said, “I do trust the system that we have in North Carolina.”
Rick Glazier, executive director of the liberal North Carolina Justice Center, said, “I don’t see anything that causes me any concerns about voting.”
So what is North Carolina doing to ensure every vote is counted?
‘Voters should be confident’
On Tuesday night, Mecklenburg County officials inserted more than 13,000 absentee ballots into a big gray tabulator. Like a high-speed copier, it spun through stacks of ballots in seconds, scanning and photographing each one. Like an additional 36,000 processed last week, the results won’t actually be counted until Nov. 3. In the meantime they’ll be stored on devices that resemble oversize thumb drives. Then everything will be locked in a secure room.
It’s a process being repeated in all of the state’s 100 counties.
When the absentee ballots first arrive, officials scan the individual bar codes on each one. Anyone trying to vote in person after filing an absentee ballot would be identified and barred from voting a second time.
Election staffs review the ballots for missing signatures or other irregularities. Then, at least in Mecklenburg, bipartisan teams of one Democrat and one Republican, each chosen by the elections board, do the same. Problem ballots, such as those missing signatures or other information, are flagged for review by the 5-member board of elections.
Ballots that are flagged are set aside pending the outcome of various lawsuits. Voters can find out the status of their ballots — even whether it’s been flagged — on the state’s BallotTrax system.
In mid-September, the state board reported that 4.6% of ballots from Black voters were being flagged compared with 1.6% of those from white voters. State election officials had no explanation for the discrepancy.
State officials are in court over a handful of legal challenges to changes in the process to “cure” absentee ballots that contain errors. The changes were part of a September court settlement in a challenge to the absentee process. Though the settlement was approved unanimously, the board’s two Republican members later resigned in protest. Their replacements, nominated by the party, were appointed Tuesday by Gov. Roy Cooper.
“We’re not comfortable at all with the (state) board of elections making changes to the system and the rules after absentee voting has already started,” Whatley said.
Notwithstanding the ongoing litigation, one elections board member from Charlotte said voters can be confident.
“Voters should be confident that their votes will be counted, either by filling out paper ballots or voting on the machines,” said Republican Mary Potter Summa. “In terms of votes coming in and votes being counted, as a lawyer and as a person who took an oath, I would not certify (the election) unless I felt it was absolutely right.”
‘Scare tactic’?
In the first presidential debate, President Trump called for volunteers to man voting sites, sparking fears of unrest or even violence.
One North Carolina Democratic lawyer even distributed a Georgetown Law School fact sheet about state laws in effect should any militia groups show up at polls.
“This is a scare tactic,” said Mecklenburg GOP strategist Larry Shaheen. “This is ludicrous for people to try to say that voting in person is going to be in any way compromised by poll observers.”
State and federal law prohibit voter intimidation or harassment within buffer zones at voting locations. Laws also prohibit denying voters unfettered access.
But Judith Kelley, dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, calls Trump himself “the biggest threat to the election.”
“He’s strategically undermining the confidence in the election,” she said. “He wants people to not turn out. He wants people to feel they won’t be safe at a polling station. Those kind of statements are a far greater threat to the election process than any kind of tampering with the ballot procedures themselves.”
Circosta, the chairman of the state elections board, said there will be 25,000 poll workers and election officials across the state who will seek to ensure a fair election.
“They all took an oath to uphold your right to vote,” he said.
For their part, many voters are at least cautiously optimistic.
“I would like to think that it would be fair,” said Republican Anna Donlan, a 40-year-old pre-school teacher from Union County. “My hope is that our country is honest enough at least that (people) cast their vote and it’s counted.”
Republican Chrystal Searcy, 53, a mortgage originator from Rutherfordton, shares that optimism.
“Call me a day-dreamer but I do think that all the votes will be counted,” she said.
This story was originally published October 7, 2020 at 12:01 PM.
