PENDER COUNTY — After being the last of North Carolina’s 100 counties to report the voting results on Primary Election Day, Pender County commissioners are seeking answers to ensure the mishap doesn’t repeat itself in upcoming elections.
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“This is a total embarrassment for Pender County,” commissioner Fred McCoy said at Monday’s meeting. “Out of 100 counties, I mean, you can’t get the voting in? And there’s been a lot of suspicion into the election, I can tell you that.”
McCoy was facing off against Brent Springer, a current board of education member, and lost by 39.45 percentage points, according to unofficial results. Statewide, it’s mandated for primary results to be canvassed by the county board of elections on Friday, March 15.
The election was not slated to be discussed on Monday, according to the commissioners’ agenda. However, it was addressed out of the gate by Chair Brad George — also up for re-election — who raised a motion to call for a staff report to explain what went wrong on Super Tuesday.
Staff attorney Patrick Buffkin told commissioners staff knew the delay was caused at least in part by technology issues.
Pender County Board of Elections Director Gregory Jackson said it was caused by the computer check-in system, but noted tabulator machines were unimpaired last Tuesday. According to Pender County spokesperson Brandi Cobb the equipment was checked ahead of time, but was “not set up correctly and therefore did not work on [Primary] Election Day.”
“All precincts ended up using a manual/paper check-in process,” Cobb explained to Port City Daily. “So instead of using the electronic poll book process, poll workers used a paper check-in process, which is the backup method if computers aren’t working properly.
Jackson told Port City Daily Monday the organizations will conduct a full investigation after finalizing votes this week.
“At this point we’re just counting the votes and finalizing the election,” he said. “So after that we will do a deep dive and figure out exactly what went wrong and where it went wrong and what we could do to minimize it in the future.”
The county’s election was observed by a representative from the state board of elections. NCBOE public information officer Patrick Gannon said division coordinator Matt Stone was present in Pender last week and in communication with the state agency during the duration of issues.
“We’re concerned that some things went wrong,” Gannon said. “However, there are backup processes and procedures that were followed. And the canvass and reconciliation processes are ongoing now.”
Gannon and Jackson noted a sample audit was conducted last week as part of the reconciliation process, which involves a bipartisan team hand-counting votes from two randomly selected precincts to ensure a match with tabulator results. Gannon said the audit was conducted on absentee ballots and precinct CT03, covering Canetuck Township.
“We did that on Wednesday,” Jackson verified. “And our numbers were clean and everything showed up true. Everything matched.”
He could not comment on whether any election results have changed since initial projections.
Commissioner George said he has not received emails from concerned constituents complaining about the election so far.
Port City Daily received one from Atkinson resident Karin Parker — who voted in the Caswell precinct, CS04, at Atkinson School Cafeteria. She told Port City Daily she was disturbed after staff instructed voters to put ballots on top of another stack of ballots in a dysfunctional tallying machine.
According to Gannon, in the event of a computer malfunction, a secured lock box — serving as an emergency bin and attached to the tabulator — is available for voters to drop in the ballots.
“Election workers would have been there to make sure the ballots were kept secure and not tampered with in any way,” Gannon said.
Jackson added the ballots would have been inaccessible to anyone other than staff.
Parker claimed ballots were “lying loosely” and “there was nothing secure about how they were stored.”
“There was a stack of them there,” she continued. “So anybody could just pick them up and do whatever with them.”
The resident did not have a photo or verification.
“I didn’t try to do that because I didn’t think they would have let me,” she said.
According to North Carolina statute § 163-166.3, voters can have phones and electronic devices while voting; however, they cannot be used to “photograph or videotape a ballot or communicate with anyone via voice, text, email, or any other method.”
Parker’s neighbor Linda Russ voted in the same precinct and corroborated her account. Russ said she wasn’t concerned about election security, noting staff was “really nice and doing what they could” by hand-counting ballots in the absence of functioning election equipment.
However, she thought inadequate staffing and spotty internet access in Atkinson could have contributed to the issue.
“We had three people working at that precinct,” she said. “I’ve worked at that precinct before, and there was a whole lot more of us working there at that time.”
Jackson said he believed the BOE had sufficient staff to carry out the election but could not give the exact number. He added he did not think less volunteers were there than in previous elections.
According to Cobb, to get all 18 precincts tabulated, five Pender County Board of Elections members, elections staff members and one representative from the State Board of Elections assisted on primary election night.
“The issues earlier in the day, which meant Board of Elections staff were out in the field assisting at voting sites, led to delays in tabulating absentee and early voting ballots, which contributed to the later reporting of results,” she explained
George said internet problems could have contributed to the issue but did not believe it was the core problem; he noted other voting sites — Sloop Point precinct SP15 at Cape Fear Community campus in Surf City — suffered the same problems despite having high speed internet. As well, Cape Fear elementary school precinct, CF11, faced the same mishap.
“I’m not sure if it was widespread with all of the precincts or if it was half of those precincts or just those three,” George said, stating he was only certain so far Atkinson, Cape Fear Elementary, and the CFCC campus in Surf City were involved in the computer malfunction.
Jackson said he could not provide specifics of the malfunction responsible for delays and which precincts were affected until the election is finalized Friday.
“The Pender County Board of Elections could have done a better job,” attorney Buffkin told commissioners Monday, though emphasized polls opened on time and every eligible vote was counted.
Commissioners expect to receive recommended actions from staff and a “full after action report” from the board of elections in the near future. George said the county could help the board of elections with funding for staff or new technology if necessary to “make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
According to the Pender County budget ordinance, commissioners contributed a little more than $400,000 to the BOE’s 2023-2024 budget.
Pender County will canvass its election results by 5 p.m. on Friday. It’s open to the public.
Tips or comments? Email journalist Peter Castagno at peter@localdailymedia.com.
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