Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Cordle Gone ... What's Next?


NC State Board of Elections Chair Bob Cordle resigned about sundown yesterday, a few hours after he had called a special meeting of the board for tomorrow for the purposes of rescinding its 3-2 vote on Monday to require greater accountability and cyber security from voting machine manufacturers. Republican David Black wanted to change his vote from Monday, when he had voted with the two Democrats to delay certification. He's now champing at the bit, evidently, to push through certification of three voting machine vendors, one of whom could not promise to produce a voter-readable paper ballot as proof of how the voter voted.

The meeting on Thursday is apparently going forward even without Cordle, and with a 2-2 stalemate likely between the remaining Democrats and Republicans, the vote on Monday can't be rescinded, and that's a good thing. Stalemate will leave in place a new criteria going forward for all voting machinery, proposed by board member Stella Anderson:
"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."
Beyond that, who will Roy Cooper appoint as the new chair of the state Board of Elections?

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