Gov. Pat McCrory, Local Leaders Highlight Election Security Measures in North Carolina

With elections right around the corner, former Governor Pat McCrory, Chair of RightCount North Carolina, joined local leaders in touring the Mecklenburg County Board of Elections facility. The tour spotlighted election security best practices and procedures at the facility. Mecklenburg County is currently testing all 5,000 of its voting machines by hand, a process necessary because the machines don’t connect to the internet.

 The visit, spearheaded by RightCount, spotlighted the many safeguards in place to protect every vote, including:

• No internet connections on voting machines—5,000 of which are being tested by hand.
• Encrypted USB drives used to transfer results securely between non-networked and connected systems.
• Multiple checks and balances ensuring ballots are protected at every step.

Gov. McCrory, who met with members of the press following the tour, emphasized that these measures are critical to restoring voter confidence and noted how even small elections can be decided by a handful of votes.

“Since I first filed for city council 36 years ago, a lot has changed in the voting process, and a lot of people don’t understand the changes, and I think all of them have been made for the betterment of transparency, voter confidence,” McCrory said.

The former governor stressed that election security is particularly crucial given how close races can be, pointing to off-year elections that “can be determined by 10 or 50 votes.”

The Mecklenburg County tour comes on the heels of the former governor’s op-ed, co-written with former Governor Jan Brewer and published in RealClearPolitics, making the case for why election administration must remain in the hands of the states, not Washington bureaucrats.

RightCount is proud to help bring greater transparency to the process and to show voters firsthand that ballots are secure and election outcomes are accurate. All North Carolinians can verify their voter registration and view a sample ballot

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