North Carolina elections officials upset a packed room of advocates for election security Friday, voting down a proposal to require stricter anti-hacking provisions in the 2020 elections and beyond.
The State Board of Elections approved three new types of voting machines that counties will have the option to buy. The main difference among them, and the source of much controversy, is whether voters will be using machines that create paper records they can review after they vote to make sure the machine was accurate, or if they will see only a bar code.
Board of Elections member Stella Anderson, who first proposed banning bar codes by requiring “human-readable” records in a meeting last month, brought it up for a vote at the board’s meeting Friday.