North Carolina State Board of Elections Cites CISA to Deny Audit Request

The North Carolina House Freedom Caucus (HFC) requested to examine state voting machines in its efforts to verify that they were not connected to the internet during the November 2020 election. The North Carolina Board of Elections denied the request, citing overriding federal authority under the Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Despite the North Carolina General Assembly’s statutes which require state employees to comply with requests for data, in a July 7 letter the elections board executive director, Karen Brinson Bell, declined the HFC’s request to inspect North Carolina voting equipment used in the 2020 election. Prior to the request denial, the HFC met with the board of elections and received confirmation to access three voting systems manufactured by the Election Systems & Software (ES&S), the largest North Carolina election vendor. 

ES&S was compliant with moving forward on an inspection of its voting systems to relieve any public concerns about its equipment. However, North Carolina election board director, Karen Bell, afterward changed tunes by declining HFC’s request to inspect the voting equipment. So now we are all wondering: What exactly is there to hide?