Malfunctioning machines and mail-in ballots: Election Board Director dispels misinformation

BRUNSWICK COUNTY, NC (WWAY) — Anxiety is at an all-time high as voters await the outcome of this year’s general election.  

Following unfounded allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election, some are still concerned about the security of their vote.   

One of the biggest concerns WWAY heard from some voters is what happens when a tabulation machine is out of service. That happened to a few machines in New Hanover County last week. 

Brunswick County Board of Elections Director Sara Lavere said machines going down can be caused by a number of things, like the machine losing power or becoming jammed.  

When that happens—Lavere said—an election judge can open a secure lock box on the scanner that ballots can be placed in. Election judges are bipartisan volunteers that assist in the polling process. 

“So we would instruct the chief judge to break that seal and allow voters to insert their ballot into that secure bin. It’s on the same piece of equipment, it’s just bypassing the scanner, and what happens then is when voting ends for that day, we have bipartisan judges read those ballots in,” Lavere explained. “So they do get scanned in the same day, in that piece of equipment once it’s repaired.”  

As for mail-in ballots, Lavere said those votes aren’t actually counted until election day.  

Those mail-in ballots are opened by a bipartisan team and fed through a scanner once a week.  

“So what we are doing every Tuesday, we are getting the board to approve the ballots, and the ones that they approve, they supervise us opening, removing the ballots, and we actually scan those into a high-speed scanner,” Lavere explained. “At the end of each meeting we just turn it off. We don’t pull any results and then we secure everything in a bin, with a security seal, that has a number, that we log, and then it comes back over here to our office and we store it in a vault.” 

The NC Board of Elections also has a page dedicated to combating misinformation. 

You can find your nearest early voting location using the early voting search tool.