. . . not in North Carolina, according to the NC State Board of Elections.
Nov 8, 2023 — By now, many in the election integrity world are buzzing over last night’s news reports that “voting machines forced multiple polling places to turn to emergency paper ballots” after “yes” became “no” and one judicial candidate became another on the ES&S ExpressVoteXL machines.
Since ES&S practically owns North Carolina’s business racket, we immediately jumped to find out how many of those exact same machines are being used in North Carolina.
In a public information request that, literally, traveled at the speed of light, I tagged the story in the platform formerly known as Twitter (PFKAT) to the NCSBE’s social media team and cc-copied the NC Legislature’s PFKAT page with my quick question: “Hey @NCSBE how many NC counties use this machine?”
Their answer, shot back in a matter or minutes, was “Zero. ExpressVoteXL is not a certified election system in NC.”
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The devil in the details is that North Carolina indeed have lots of counties using the ES&S ExpressVote. Around 85 counties use them for ADA voters who cannot otherwise handle a paper ballot. From what we can tell on the NCSBE website, seven counties require ALL voters to use the paperless ExpressVote ballots.
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But taking the SBE social media team at their word, nobody in NC uses the XL version of that ES&S machine.
Is this only a technicality?
We toss the answer to that question over to those who have a deeper understanding of election machinery. But for now, it looks like our state’s election administrators dodged a sticky wicket.
~ JD
