Upon further review: Commission finds that NC elections suffer from deficits and distrust

by Sarah Michels, Carolina Public Press
February 10, 2025

James Hardaway spent Election Night counting ballots in Wake County. With another poll worker standing behind him as a second pair of eyes, Hardaway physically checked each paper ballot, ensuring that the numbers matched those the precinct’s tabulators had been tracking all day and night. In other elections across North Carolina, similar scenes were playing out.

Afterwards, the Wake County precinct workers knew “beyond a shadow of a doubt” that the numbers aligned, Hardaway said. 

But not everyone shared that knowledge. 

“That’s not good enough for someone who’s reading something on Facebook or Twitter that there are 500,000 voted ballots that are only voting for one candidate,” Hardaway said. “If you look at the raw numbers, that’s not true. But when that post gets a million views, it gets legs.”  

Hardaway, an Army veteran, is one of 60 members of the Commission on the Future of North Carolina Elections, a first of its kind, comprehensive review of the state’s election systems and processes. 

Last week, the commission met at Catawba College to discuss its findings and recommendations after a multi-year effort. While the commission’s 11 committees covered a wide range of election topics, they arrived at two major conclusions. 

First, North Carolina’s elections need more funding to operate effectively. 

Second: North Carolinians do not know or understand the state’s electoral processes enough, which leads to confusion, distrust and apathy. 

‘Nobody’s done this’

The Commission on the Future of North Carolina Elections launched in October 2023 with a mission:  increase confidence and trust in the state’s electoral process through comprehensive review. Members came from across the state and varied in age, race, gender and political affiliation. 

The commission originated from an organization called the North Carolina Network for Fair, Safe and Secure Elections and counts Catawba College as a partner in the effort. 

It’s led by a bipartisan pair: former Charlotte Mayor Jennifer Roberts, a Democrat, and Bob Orr, a former state Supreme Court justice who had been a longtime Republican. 

Since its inception, the commission’s 11 committees have held over 80 meetings to discuss and debate various aspects of the state’s electoral process. 

The commission’s bipartisan committees looked into, among other things, North Carolina’s ballot security, election infrastructure and administration, campaign finance and voter access. 

“Nobody’s done this,” Orr said. “As critical as elections are to democracy, to our state, I’m not aware of any governmental units or academic entities that have done the kind of comprehensive work that this group has.” 

Voters lack trust in the elections process

For the most part, North Carolinians’ trust in elections depends on whether their preferred party wins. That’s according to a pair of surveys conducted in August 2024 and January 2025 by YouGov, a British market research company.

Over 1,000 North Carolinians were asked how confident they were in the security and integrity of North Carolina voting before — and after — the 2024 election. 

In August, 71% said they believed in the voting process with Democrats expressing significantly higher confidence than Republicans — 83% to 63%.

However, after President Donald Trump won reelection, those numbers changed for members of both parties. Overall confidence rose to 80%. But Republicans’ confidence in election integrity spiked to 86% while that number for Democrats dropped slightly to 81%.

There was a starker partisan divide when respondents were asked if they thought that votes in their county would be accurately counted.

Before the election, 89% of Democrats and 66% of Republicans said they thought that the votes would be correctly tallied. But afterwards, only 75% of Democrats felt that way. The confidence of Republicans, however, skyrocketed to 86%.

Hardaway said his committee found that the doubts of voters stems from a lack of understanding. They don’t know how election technology works. They don’t trust that the ballot’s path from printing to counting is secure each step of the way. And they want more proof that voter rolls are accurate and regularly maintained.  

While a great deal of information on these processes already exists publicly, in places like the State Board of Elections’ website, there’s a need to more aggressively advertise and spread the knowledge among the electorate, the committee found. 

“More communication and more information is ultimately going to build confidence in the process,” said Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University.

The civics education we’re missing

While there are legislative efforts to bolster civic education — including a bill introduced this session requiring UNC System institutions to require at least three credit hours in American history or government to graduate — they often focus on specific historical documents, such as the Gettysburg Address or Federalist Papers. 

But there’s not much that teaches young people on how localities prepare and run elections.

Martha Kropf, a UNC-Charlotte political science professor, told the commission she once asked her college class a series of basic questions to gauge their election knowledge. Among them: Can a felon vote?

The correct answer is yes — once they’ve served their sentence, completed probation and paid any restitution. 

But only 18% of her students got it right. Some were even insistent that Kropf was wrong. 

The commission discussed trying to get more basic election knowledge into this session’s bill. 

Civic education requires civic engagement

People who start voting at 18 tend to make civic involvement a habit throughout their life, Catawba College political science professor Michael Bitzer said. 

But the opposite is also true. 

“If you get later into your life and haven’t participated or haven’t cast ballots, it’s perceivably harder to get people engaged and into a mindset of being civically engaged,” Bitzer explained. 

The committee devoted to civic education found that most county election offices who responded to their survey did not have someone on staff whose job description included voter education.

Some advocated for paying non-voters, particularly those who are younger or in marginalized communities, to participate in research on what civic engagement barriers they face. Many brought up social media as a necessary tool to reach less civically-engaged North Carolinians. 

Whatever the solution may be, Bitzer said it will have to start small. 

“Everything in American history teaches us that oftentimes things that are fundamentally shifting … begin at the local level,” he said. 

Elections and their cost

The commission noted that one area in dire need of investment is campaign finance.

Each election cycle, over 3,317 political entities are legally required to file campaign finance reports. Most have to file more than one during each cycle. 

Two attorneys, six to seven auditors and one to two investigators are responsible for policing all of those reports with software that’s over 20 years old. 

A commission committee found that hiring at least two more auditors, in addition to investing in modern-day software, would better hold candidates and campaign finance organizations more accountable in a timely manner. 

Understaffing and outdated technology underscore the challenges. Last December, a three-plus year investigation into campaign finance violations committed during Mark Robinson’s run for lieutenant governor finally concluded. 

Poll position

Funding is also needed to address critical personnel challenges in several areas of election administration, the commission found. 

In the past five years, election directors in 61 of North Carolina’s 100 counties have left their jobs. A Carolina Public Press investigation found that safety concerns, increasing complexity of the job as voter policies constantly change and low pay were behind the exodus. 

Minimum pay for election directors was set at $12 an hour in 1999 and hasn’t increased since. 

Their responsibilities have increased exponentially since then. And now, with the passage of Senate Bill 382, they will face tighter deadlines to count provisional and absentee ballots after elections. 

In addition to election directors, the supply of poll workers is suffering from a lack of funding. In 2022, 48% of North Carolina jurisdictions reported difficulty recruiting workers.

To combat that, election administrators will have to get more creative, said Leslie Garvin, executive director of an organization called North Carolina Campus Engagement. 

“Has anybody seen a commercial to recruit you as a poll worker or an ad on social media or something?” she asked. “We’ve got so much access to folks now, and we need to use that.” 

Where do elections go from here?

While last Tuesday was the unofficial “graduation” of the Commission on the Future of North Carolina Elections, the work is far from over. 

By its bipartisan nature, the commission did not reach a consensus on every issue and recommended some things for further study. 

Within the next month or so, the group will present its findings and recommendations to the legislature. 

In October 2023, the commission set out to answer one question, Bitzer recalled: “Can we, with confidence, say to our fellow citizens in this state that North Carolina’s election system is fair, safe and secure? Is it a good system?

“I think we can take away the answer is yes.” 

This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.