CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Mecklenburg County is switching to paper-based voting machines but the Director of Elections wonders if the county can meet the deadline of January 1 2020.
“It puts it on a very tight time frame,” said Director Michael Dickerson.
Mecklenburg County is one of several counties in the state that are mandated to change to paper ballots.
The idea is to prevent any attempt to hack into electronic data-based equipment.
Last week NBC Charlotte reported on a federal investigation aimed at determining if Russia hacked into software used in the 2016 Presidential election in Durham.
Thursday, the State Board of Elections in Raleigh began to wrestle with what new paper-based equipment would be used, giving Dickerson and other elections officials very little time to get the new equipment and train how to use it.
“I’ve got a September primary and a general election for Congressional District Nine. I’ve got a possible second primary in October and a November city of Charlotte and all the other municipal elections,” Dickerson said.
South Carolina rolled out that state’s new paper-based equipment on Monday of this week.
Election officials there say the equipment will be in place and ready to go for the South Carolina Presidential primary in February.
The North Carolina State Board of Elections released this statement:
The State Board of Elections on Thursday postponed a decision on whether to certify three new voting systems for use in North Carolina elections. Instead, the five-member State Board voted unanimously to require each vendor, by noon on June 21, to disclose any owners or shareholders with a 5 percent or greater interest or share in the company, any subsidiary companies, and the vendor’s parent company.