North Carolina State Auditor Dave Boliek appeared on Carolina Journal’s “The Debrief” on March 6. Early in the episode, Editor-in-Chief Donna King asked Boliek if he was open to having a team under him to audit elections. Here was his response:
I spoke on the campaign trail about auditing the [North Carolina State] Board of Elections (SBE). That was before Senate Bill 382, which transfered the authority to appoint the state board and appoint local members of the county boards of elections and to manage the budget of the board of elections. I think it is important for the purposes of public confidence in our elections to have an independent look at the way our elections are run.
Look, the board of elections, ultimately, they count votes, and they count legal votes. And that, I think, is what the general public wants and expects out of their board of elections.
I’m open to that. I’m also open to my office, the State Auditor’s office, doing a deep dive at the board of Elections just to get a look under the hood at how things are done.
Boliek then noted that his staff would soon complete financial and performance audits on itself. Those audits consider different questions; the first asks if the government agency is being respectful of taxpayers’ money, and the second asks if it is doing its job correctly.
What a “performance,” or procedural, audit might look like
A February 18 research brief at the John Locke Foundation (Locke) considered what an election procedural audit might look like. It would be more than recounting ballots to see that they match the original count and the number of voters (although that is a necessary step). It would also verify ballot and equipment chains of custody and that officials followed election law so that voters could have confidence that the entire process, from voter registration to the final ballot count, produced a “trustworthy record of voter intent.”
The brief noted Utah’s successful implementation of its “performance” audit law. Three aspects of Utah’s experience should be applied as North Carolina considers its own such law:
- It would cover procedures during a two-year period, not just for individual primaries or elections.
- It would be conducted by an outside entity, for North Carolina the Office of the Auditor.
- It would include responses from the state’s chief elections officer, the Executive Director of the State Board of Elections.
An ongoing need for procedural audits
Locke’s review of the 2020 election noted North Carolina’s lack of procedural election audits and what such audits would entail (endnotes replaced with links):
The SBE’s mandated post-election audit report to the General Assembly covered outcomes but not, with the possible exception of close contest audit, procedures. The National Conference of State Legislatures provides a glimpse of such an audit:
States may have a process for ensuring that the correct process and procedures were followed during the course of the election. This is referred to as a “procedural audit” and may be conducted instead of or in addition to a post-election audit. Procedural audits vary in their scope and comprehensiveness, but almost always include a ballot accounting and reconciliation process. This isn’t a check that the software in the voting machine is working correctly, but rather a check on the human processes.
There is an overlap between procedural audits and what professors Andrew Appel and Philip Stark call “compliance audits” in their 2019 report. Their research found that election audits must be based on:
Voter-verified paper records; to ensure that those records include every validly cast vote exactly once, and no other votes (checking the determination of eligibility, in particular); to ensure that those records remain complete and intact from the moment they are cast through the audit; and to assess the evidence that they are trustworthy.
Determining voter eligibility would require a review of voter registration records. A full procedural audit would also verify chains of custody for all ballots and voting equipment, ensuring that only eligible citizens can vote, and that observers and the public had meaningful access to every step of the election process. The good news is that county boards of elections and local election officials already have a reconciliation process in place that collects much of that data. It seeks to match information across several categories, including, for example, the total number of ballots issued with the total number of ballots cast within each voting location. Election officials complete reconciliation forms at the end of each day of voting. That information is reported to county boards of elections and is already partially included in the SBE’s audit report in the form of history and close contest audits. Reconciliation is also a part of the county canvass that takes place ten days after election day, and it would likely not take much more work to present the full findings in the SBE’s post-election audit.
The report also noted that the Office of the State Auditor could house an independent election auditing body.
Gettings to “yes” for independent procedural audits
So, there is a need for independent procedural election audits in North Carolina, and State Auditor Dave Boliek has embraced housing an election auditing body within his agency. The Office of the Auditor will soon have budgetary and appointment power over the State Board of Elections, assuming the law transferring that authority from the governor survives a lawsuit from Gov. Josh Stein. No matter the results of that lawsuit, housing a body to conduct procedural election audits in the Auditor’s office makes sense.
Both sides of the election security debate should support independent procedural audits. Those who do trust election officials should welcome an independent body having the authority to “get a look under the hood” of how our elections are conducted. Likewise, those who believe elections in North Carolina are run well should welcome the opportunity to prove that through an outside audit. While nobody likes the idea of someone looking over your shoulder, I believe that election officials would benefit from an independent set of eyes seeing how they work, making suggestions to help them do their jobs better, and presenting the General Assembly with ideas to improve how elections are run in North Carolina.
None of that can happen without the approval of the General Assembly.
There are many good reasons for the North Carolina Office of the Auditor to conduct procedural election audits. It is up to the General Assembly to make it a reality.
