The North Carolina State Board of Elections will conduct a hand-counting audit today at noon to verify the accuracy of municipal election results. According to a press release, staff will randomly select precincts, early voting sites, and absentee ballots to compare hand-counted totals with machine-tabulated results from the recent elections.
The audit is part of a wider effort to ensure transparency and maintain public confidence in the electoral process. Observers can follow the random selection of precincts, early voting sites, and absentee ballots either online via WebEx, by phone using access code 62723#, or in person at the board’s Raleigh office. The process will begin with a ten-dice roll to generate a ten-digit seed number, which will be used to determine the groups of ballots included in the audit.
These audits are required under state law to confirm that machine-tabulated results accurately reflect voters’ intentions. To maintain transparency, the public will have access to the software and instructions needed to replicate the random selection process, allowing anyone to independently verify that the chosen sample aligns with the officially generated random selection.
Additional information on these preliminary security measures is available on the board’s election security awareness page. After the hand counts in the selected precincts are completed, the results will be compared with the original machine counts, and any discrepancies will be investigated in accordance with the board’s commitment to election integrity.
Those wishing to observe the audit can do so today afternoon, either online or in person. After the ballot groups are selected, the list will be posted on the board’s website and shared with county election offices. The software and code used for the audit are also available in the Board of Elections’ public files folder for anyone interested in examining the process more closely.
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