NCGOP Gets On Board With Trump: Absentee Ballots in NC Are Now To Be Considered Fraudulent

We know that David Black and Ken Raymond, the two Republicans on the state Board of Elections (SBOE), resigned from the board barely 24 hours after agreeing to changes to absentee-by-mail balloting to resolve complaints in two law suits. Black and Raymond, in their resignation letters, alleged that they were essentially duped into agreeing to the settlement. In response to those claims, the SBOE released the minutes of the closed session showing pretty conclusively that both Black and Raymond were active and willing participants in the discussions and agreed to all the changes.

If a judge approves the lawsuit settlement — which will be up for debate in court Oct. 2 — the new rules would make it easier for voters to fix problems with absentee ballots by signing an affidavit to confirm their identity, instead of having to start over from scratch with a new ballot.

The changes would also extend the number of days after the election that mail-in ballots could arrive and still be counted, and would tweak the rules surrounding the process for people to get a mail-in ballot but then drop it off in person, either at their county elections office or during early voting at a polling place. (Will Doran et al.)

We of course suspected that Black and Raymond had been forced to resign (because we may have fallen off the turnip truck, but we didn't land on our head), and Black's wife Deb totally spilled the beans on Facebook and removed all doubt: “... these resignations were not voluntary. They were told to resign. Sad times when republicans are firing intelligent and trustworthy republicans.”

The subtext for the forced resignations appears to be this: Black and Raymond, by participating in and agreeing to the legal settlement, were messing with the Trumpist message taking shape across the country: The November elections will be invalid/fradulent because of absentee voting. Senate Republican boss Phil Berger took up the cry with gusto, alleging that the changes to absentee-by-mail voting "is inviting folks to do things to game an election.” Do things. Classic Trumpist innuendo minus evidence.

Berger was just falling in line with the narrative launched by Trump two days earlier: "Get rid of the ballots!" Echoed one day  after that by the eternally flip-flopping Sen. Thom Tillis who vowed he had "grave concerns." Just two days earlier he had said he had so much faith in the absentee system that he challenged his Democratic challenger, Cal Cunningham, to vote by mail.

It's a unified front of Republican office-holders trying to invalidate the election ahead of time for reasons we perfectly understand, and David Black and Ken Raymond were inconvenient to the narrative.

Enter Stage Right ... Four Eggers

Raleigh reporter Tim Boyum reported this morning that Stacy C. Eggers IV, the "Four" of local voter suppression fame, is one of the names being pushed forward by the NCGOP as a replacement member on the SBOE.

Oh goody!

Both Republicans Resigned Last Night From the NC Board of Elections

 

Republican NCSBE members David Black and Ken Raymond submitted hurried (un-proofread) letters of resignation only hours after they had agreed -- along with the Democratic members -- to a legal settlement over certain problems with mail-in ballots ... fueling a rumor that they were forced to resign by NCGOP bosses unhappy that they had failed to make absentee voting harder in North Carolina.

The legal settlement that Black and Raymond had agreed to, "if approved by a judge, would create new rules to make it easier for people to fix mistakes on their mail-in ballots. It also would extend the amount of time after the election that absentee ballots could come in and still be counted" (Will Doran and Jessica Banov).

Black and Raymond said they were resigning "on principle," the principle apparently being that the NCGOP leadership is mad because North Carolina isn't suppressing the vote enough.

The NCGOP must now submit names to Gov. Roy Cooper for replacement appointments.

The forced resignation of Black and Raymond -- if they were forced -- seems part of an overall scheme by Trumpists everywhere to cloak absentee-by-mail balloting in a pall of "fraud" to make it easier for Twitterman to declare himself the winner even if he isn't and to complete the politicizing of the Supreme Court (conveniently equipped by November 3rd with a new Trump toady put there to protect his interests).

Today's SBOE Action -- Republican Members Continue To Line Up Against Voting Machine Security

BREAKING NEWS
SBOE Chair Damon Circosta reluctantly agreed to vote for Democrat Stella Anderson's motion -- which passed 3-2 -- for SBOE staff to properly test and subsequently ensure that all NC-approved voting machines meet the security requirements of state and federal law. I say "reluctantly" because Mr. Circosta started the discussion by stating he thought the motion might be better contained in a "directive" to the staff. Anderson wanted a vote of the Board, and she got it.

Her motion was much more technical and involved than the first sentence above reflects, but I think I caught the gist of it.

Lynn Bernstein of Transparent Elections had charged that "NC didn't follow their own requirements for certification of election systems. This cannot be disregarded by the state and will not be ignored by election security advocates & voters." Anderson's motion would appear to be reaction to that charge, and is commendable anyway for trying to ensure that ESandS voting machines, for example, are not merely safe but really most sincerely safe.

The two Republican members of the SBOE -- David Black and Ken Raymond -- voted against Anderson's motion and offered no reasons for their votes.

The meeting was conducted via telephone, and no public comments were taken.

Stella Anderson's Plan To Harden NC's Elections Against Cyber Attacks Still Hangs in the Balance

Stella Anderson
Photo Brendan Hoekstra,
The Appalachian

Jordan Wilkie, writing in The Indy, understands the importance of this past week for the future of democracy in North Carolina. The resignation of state Board of Elections (SBOE) Chair Bob Cordle preserved Stella Anderson's initiative to make electronic voting equipment much less susceptible to foreign and domestic mischief. August 23rd will be D-Day for that proposal when the SBOE will vote on final approval.

Had Cordle remained chair through Thursday's special called meeting, Republican member David Black would have changed his earlier aye vote, and with the other Republican member, Ken Raymond, the three-man majority would have overruled Anderson and pushed through certification of machinery that produces only barcode paper receipts of how a voter voted.

Anderson saw that as unacceptable, and so do we.

Specifically, a rescind vote would have saved the bacon of one "controversial vendor" of touch-screen technology, Elections Systems and Software, or ESandS, the company that promises that their barcodes are accurate reflections of voter intent.

"Controversial vendor"? Jordan Wilkie is also a reporter for The Guardian, and his reporting on a federal lawsuit in Georgia challenging the constitutionality of that state's election process tracked the role of ESandS, which was supplying voting equipment for the 2018 close and contested election of Republican Brian Kemp in Georgia. Testimony in that case revealed that ESandS staffers built the 2018 Georgia ballot at their homes, without verifiable security. “You’re taking what the state has said is the roadmap to hack an election and they’re just letting it sit on people’s home computers with no evidence of any kind of security,” one of the plaintiffs said. “I mean, it’s truly insane. I cannot overstate how crazy that is.”

(You could spend all day following Google links about ESandS, "the largest voting machine company in the US," headquartered in Omaha.)

Wilkie gives Stella Anderson a laurel wreath for protecting our very democracy: "If Anderson’s motion passes [on August 23], it would be the first of its kind in the nation and would follow best-practice guidelines from election security experts. Not only would ESandS’s voting machines be removed from consideration, but it would make North Carolina an entirely hand-marked paper ballot state...."

Josh Lawson, who was the SBOE’s general counsel until June, has been speaking out on the issue too and totally agrees with Anderson: “My immediate and short-term concern is voter confidence,” Lawson says. “I think that the barcode ballot process does not support or instill voter confidence to the same degree as hand-marked paper ballots...."

Our "democracy watch" on this whole issue now turns to Governor Roy Cooper and his choice to replace Bob Cordle at the SBOE. Will that person be in place by August 23rd? And will that person vote affirmatively for Anderson's proposal to change certification requirements in North Carolina to ensure paper-ballot proof from electronic equipment?

BREAKING NEWS: SBOE Declines To Rescind Stella Anderson's Motion

Just now the remaining four members of the State Board of Elections deadlocked 2-2 on Republican David Black's motion to rescind the vote from Monday evening.

This means that Stella Anderson's original motion to modify the North Carolina certification program for electronic voting machines will go forward through a 15-day comment period, with final implementation of that modification to be voted on at an August 23 meeting.

Once again, the modification as proposed is this requirement:

"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."

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?

Watauga's Stella Anderson To the Rescue for Ballot Security

SBOE members Stella Anderson, far left,
and Jeff Carmon listen to presentation
by an officer of Election Systems & Software.
Photo Dan Kane, News and Observer

The State Board of Elections met last night for the purpose of certifying new voting equipment for all North Carolina polling places in 2020 and beyond. Instead, on a motion by Watauga County board member Stella Anderson, the decision was put off another 15 days until the SBOE can change its requirements to insist that vendors will guarantee that any touch-screen type machine also produces a paper ballot that a voter can read. (One of the big dogs in the election machine business, Election Systems and Software, offered a machine that produces a barcode. "I don't read barcode!" said Chris Telesca at a public hearing on Sunday night.)

Anderson's exact language in the motion that passed 3-2 (hattip Travis Fain):

"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."

In the speech Anderson made prior to her motion, she said, "I think I speak for all board members in saying voter trust and confidence in the security and integrity of any voting system we put in use in North Carolina is vital. Part of promoting that confidence requires that voters are able to verify their choices and know those choices are what will be tabulated."

Amen, Sister.

But here's where the wicket got sticky last night. Delaying the certification, the board automatically triggers a 15-day public comment period before any final vote can be taken. The board had already been through one delay while foreign ownership of any potentially certifiable voting machine was probed for unwanted influence. The Department of Homeland Security cleared the vendors of any foreign ownership. So Bob Cordle, the Democratic chair of the State Board of Elections, was antsy, and he didn't want to wait any more, cyber-security be damned. Neither did Republican member Ken Raymond of Winston-Salem.

Let's get it done, argued Cordle and Raymond.

Let's get it right, replied Anderson, joined by Jeff Carmon, the other Democrat. “This vote wasn’t taken lightly,” Carmon said. “Our state’s been in the news enough.”

Read more here: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article233278201.html#storylink=cpy

In the end and coming as a surprise, Republican David Black voted with Anderson and Carmon.

BURNING QUESTION AND A SIDE-NOTE

Why is Bob Cordle so all-fired determined to certify equipment that nobody trusts? Nobody? Well, in truth, Cordle trusts it, and so does Raymond, and the companies wanting to make big bucks on the State Board's certification trust their own product (you bet!), but on what actual grounds (let alone reality) anyone is supposed to trust cyber equipment that can't be verified...  no thanks.

Every reporter is crediting Cary veteran poll worker Lynn Bernstein for arguing persuasively at Sunday's public hearing against machinery that produces barcodes. But the opposition to the barcode equipment on the board was already building before Sunday night. Because the actual final vote was supposed to have happened at the end of that public hearing on Sunday night, not last night. The delay came because on Sunday night, Republican Ken Raymond was missing. Cordle apparently knew that fellow Democrats Anderson and Carmon would vote no on rushing certification, leaving him with a probable tie if Republican David Black voted with him. So he delayed the final vote to last night when Raymond could be there. In the meantime, Republican David Black upended that applecart by voting with Anderson and Carmon. Whaddya know! A Republican that takes cyber threats seriously!

Meanwhile, one Democrat on the SBOE doesn't appear to care so much.

ADDENDUM
Bob Cordle's curious defense of electronic voting machines, particularly those made by Electronic Systems and Software (ESandS), goes back at least to the SBOE meeting on July 11th when Lynn Bernstein first raised issues with those machines. From reporting by Aditi Kharod:

“Remote-access software and modems on election equipment is the worst decision for security short of leaving ballot boxes on a Moscow street corner,” said Bernstein, quoting a statement Sen. Wyden made to Motherboard. Bernstein argued that a company that had repeatedly lied about the nature of its machines and had only revealed the truth after being caught in its lies could not be trusted to help keep North Carolina’s elections safe.

“This begs the question: why is this board trusting ES&S’ word that these machines are secure and accurate?” asked Bernstein.

Bob Cordle, the chair of the SBE, pushed back against Bernstein’s arguments.

“In my experience… we had more problems with hand ballots than we did with any other ballots,” said Cordle. “There was more lying, cheating, and stealing going on… and also questions about… there were lots of questions about whether the oval was filled in, whether both ovals were filled in, so there are problems with hand ballots, too.”

“The research showed that 0.007% of ballots have stray marks,” said Bernstein. “That’s very, very few.”

“All I know is we saw a number of them,” said Cordle. “But I don’t wanna’ argue with you."