In the aftermath of the 2024 general election, the State Board of Elections has set into motion a vital procedure to validate the vote count. With safeguarding the integrity of the electoral process as the paramount concern, the board declared that it will randomly select precincts, early voting locations, and absentee-by-mail ballots for a hand count audit, as reported by NCSBE.
Tomorrow, the audit's first phase will abruptly kick off. The selection process, transparent and random, aims to thoroughly check a representative sample against the electronic tallies. All 100 county boards of elections will, thereafter, recount the presidential contest by hand from the chosen samples. To affirm their accuracy, these hand-count totals ought then to be compared to those of the machine counts.
The legal mandate for such audits under state law—specifically outlined in N.C.G.S. § 163-182.1(b)(1)—is clear. These checks are crucial not just for the verification of the currently collected electronic election results, but they also act to fortify public confidence in the electoral process as a whole. The procedural specifics of selecting auditing samples have been made public and include the use of dice to produce a seed number for randomness, subsequently inputted into a software program to pick the ballot groupings to be audited.
Anyone interested can join the process either online using Webex or by phone on (415) 655-0003, with Access code: 2429 252 7348#, passcode 62723#. They could also choose to quickly drop by in person at the State Board of Elections office, situated on the third floor of the Dobbs Building at 430 N. Salisbury St., Raleigh, NC. The generated random groups will then be made public, posted to the NCSBE's official website and furnished to the county boards for action.
To ensure processes are clear and transparent, North Carolina's election officials provide resources for the public to replicate the audit sample selection. Members of the public can very well download the necessary software and files from the NCSBE Public Files Folder for the verification of results. This procedure mirrors the rigorous pre-election testing of tabulators, ensuring the machines' accurate count of the coded ballots. Additional information on the security measures in place for North Carolina elections can be found under Election Security at the NCSBE's official website.
