If you’re a supporter of the “hand-marked paper ballots” movement, you should be keeping a close eye on increasingly bizarre election security developments in North Carolina right now.
SWING STATE NORTH CAROLINA’S PLAGUE OF VOTING MACHINES
Seventy-nine of North Carolina’s 100 counties already exclusively use hand-marked paper ballots read by low-tech air-gapped scantron machines in all of their elections (except for small numbers of touchscreen machines made available to disabled voters but seldom used). But the remaining 21 counties (including the state’s largest, Mecklenburg, home to reliably blue Charlotte) are somehow inexplicably addicted to costly, unreliable, antiquated and insecure touchscreen voting machines — specifically, the scandal-plagued ES&S iVotronic. In recent years, every election has brought impossible-to-confirm reports out of Charlotte of voters who watched in horror as iVotronics changed their votes just before locking them out.
North Carolina’s otherwise odious 2013 “monster voter suppression law,”The Voter Identification Verification Act(VIVA), had one surprisingly sensible provision tucked away inside it: a section ordering the decertification of all electronic voting machines then in use by Jan. 1, 2018 (later extended to Dec. 1, 2019). Any new machines certified by the State Board of Elections for counties to purchase to replace their now-decertified machines would henceforth be required to produce “an individual paper document that bears marks made by the voter by hand or through electronic means”— not quite a hand-marked paper ballot, but close.
THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK
Of course, the old machines’ powerful vendor, ES&S, found a dodge to work its way around the spirit of the VIVA provision. It literally bolted onto the side of the old iVotronic a thermal paper tape printer like those used to produce cash register receipts. The tape it produces, recording the voter’s every selection, flies past under a clear plastic window, difficult to read and never to be seen again by the voter. Other vendors took a slightly different yet equally cynical approach, producing individual receipt tapes that encode the voter’s choices in a non-human-readable barcode. That unverifiable barcode is then scanned and counted as the voter’s true vote, even though the voter has no idea what it says.
What’s in its pocketses?
With concerns regarding Russian hacking of the 2016 election growing more fraught every day, the North Carolina State Board of Elections met on June 13, 2019 to certify new voting machines acceptable for use in the upcoming 2020 election cycle. But in a surprise move encouraged by the Board’s new civil servant executive director, Karen Brinson Bell, the five-member board (comprised of three Democratic and 2 Republican political appointees) postponed their certification decision, first requiring vendors to immediately reveal the identities of any and all parties owning 5% or more of their companies or their parent companies. ES&S, Clear Ballot, and Hart InterCivic all produced the required financial information, which was vetted by the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security and judged to present no concerns regarding foreign ownership.
Then things really started to get interesting.
Whoa, back up the bus…
At a second meeting to certify the winning vendors last Monday (heavily attended by concerned citizens demanding hand-marked paper ballots), just as it seemed the board was about to vote to certify all three vendors offerings, board member Stella Anderson (D) made a surprise motion:
“I think most of us understand that there are a number of concerns that have come to light, that we know we're dealing with now that we did not know we were dealing with in 2015 or even 2016. And cybersecurity, for one, would be right up there.
So in light of all this, I believe it is incumbent on us to modify our certification program and specify the requirements for any ballot marking device for recording the voter's selection. So I move that the State Board [schedule] a meeting to consider modification of its election systems certification program to add a section as follows: [...] ‘Recording of Voter's Selection: An electronically assisted ballot marking device or other ballot marking equipment shall produce human-readable marks on a paper ballot. The voter must be able to verify his or her intent as evidenced by the mark on the ballot. The mark shall be tabulated as the voter's selection.’“
Anderson’s motion was quickly seconded by board member Jeff Carmon III (D), who added:
“I have heard from [the citizen-commenters present], your emails and your phone calls, and since then I have toyed with one phrase: 'We The People'. And as I processed that, and read through your emails, I realized that there's a group of you that can change our country. With that in mind, I want us to do all that we can to restore faith in our voting system, and get to a point where we can say 'We The People' with confidence. So I second the motion.”
The vote on the motion proved equally surprising, with Democrat Robert Cordle (the board’s chair) joining Republican Ken Raymond to vote against the motion, while Republican David Black quite unexpectedly crossed over to join with Democrats Anderson and Carmon to pass the motion, effectively shelving the certification process yet again, and likely setting the stage for all three vendors’ products to be denied certification, since none of them tabulate human-readable marks on paper.
The audience, just moments before somber as they had begun to suspect that certification was a foregone conclusion, suddenly erupted in applause, radiated with beaming faces, and was fanned with hand-shaking and celebratory pats on the back. Thanks to three courageous board members, North Carolina was drawing its line in the sand in defense of democracy: only human-readable marks on paper would be tabulated as votes in 2020 — a stunning turn of events.
back up the bus, part deux
But the next morning — less than 24 hours after the surprise vote — the State Board of Elections silently dropped a bomb on those joyful celebrants by releasing without comment a brief public notice:
A collective cry of “What the FUCK???” was fairly audible across the Tarheel State. Apparently, Chairman Cordle was calling a meeting to vote on a yet-to-be-made motion to reverse the previous day’s board decision. Reading the tea leaves of NC politics, that could mean only one thing: Republican David Black had changed his mind, and now wished to change his vote on yesterday’s motion from ‘aye’ to ‘no’— thus overturning the board’s previous 3-to-2 decision.
We’ll probably never know what transpired overnight to make Black change his mind — how many phone wires melted down carrying calls between outraged ES&S executives and stunned NC GOP officials, what carrots were offered, what sticks brandished. We know only that chairman Cordle briefly explained to a reporter that Black was “confused” regarding what he had voted for.
As quickly as they had leapt with elation the night before, state voting rights activists plunged headlong into confusion and despair the next morning. One leader emailed me: “I am bewildered - it is an emotional whiplash for me. I was so excited to have a ‘win’ last night. I am seriously bummed out today. I have not researched to find if there are financial ties from these vendors to NCGOP. Do you know if they are big donors in NC?”Another, a voting rights attorney, wrote simply “I saw that meeting notice and was really confused! There really is a lot at stake here.”
None of us knew what the hell was going on. But it would transpire that, only a few hours later, we would know even less.
“Take my wife...please”
Almost before the ink was dry on the state board’s meeting notice, a story flashed across the state’s news wires: chairman Cordle, convening a training conference for the state’s more than 600 county elections officials that same morning, had opened his remarks with a long, rambling, NSFW joke about Irish villagers concerned that their only milk cow would not let the village bull mount her. “Did you buy that cow in Wales?” a veterinarian inquired. “We did!” the villagers replied; “however could you tell?”“Because my wife is from Wales, too” the veterinarian sighed.
Witnesses at the event reported that jaws dropped across the packed meeting hall. “It was misogynistic and wildly inappropriate” one elections official commented to a reporter.
Only a few hours later, Cordle submitted his resignation from the State Board of Elections to Gov. Roy Cooper, who accepted it on the spot, effective immediately.
math is hard
Cordle’s sudden departure from the playing field seems once more to alter the political calculus. While the Board’s hastily called Thursday meeting still remains scheduled, its now four members will almost certainly split in a deadlocked 2-2 vote on the question of rescinding the earlier motion, thus leaving it in effect. It seems unlikely that Gov. Cooper can rush the statutory process involved in making a replacement appointment for Cordle before tomorrow’s meeting, but it’s almost certain that he’ll have that new appointee in place before the next meeting after that, two weeks from today, when the board will vote on the proposed amendment to the state’s voting machine certification requirements.
Right now the state’s smart money is betting that unless that new appointee proves to be another faithless Dem like Cordle (which seems bloody unlikely), the board will adopt the new certification requirement two weeks from today, making North Carolina the first state in the nation to require voting machines to produce human-readable marks on paper that are tabulated as the voter’s vote.
But given that such devices don’t currently exist, it’s still unclear what that means for the 21 counties and 2.4 million North Carolina voters who must find new voting systems before the 2020 primary election.
Will the GOP-controlled state legislature rush through emergency legislation to permit those counties to continue to use their old and terribly insecure machines in 2020, or to block the board’s amended certification requirement altogether? Possibly. Will Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper veto such legislation? Perhaps. Will the legislature (which lost its Republican veto-proof super-majority in 2018) overturn Cooper’s veto? Unlikely. Will the dust settle in time for North Carolina to hold elections in 2020 at all? Good question; no idea.
Or maybe, you know, those benighted 21 counties could just buy themselves some goddamn already certified scantrons and use hand-marked paper ballots in 2020, just like the rest of us 4.6 million other NC voters already happily do.
Stay tuned. In North Carolina voting rights action it ain’t over till it’s over...and it ain’t ever over.