Citing overriding federal authority under the Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the North Carolina Board of Elections (BOE) has denied a North Carolina House Freedom Caucus (HFC) request to examine voting machines.
Chairman of the caucus, Rep. Keith Kidwell (R-Beaufort), told The Epoch Times that although there is a statute that requires state employees to comply with requests for data from the North Carolina General Assembly, Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the elections board, declined the request to inspect voting equipment used in the November 2020 election in a July 7 letter.
During a July 15 press conference, Kidwell said the HFC had been responding to public concern regarding transparency in the election process.
Before the denial, the HFC met with the BOE twice, and Kidwell added that Elections Systems & Software (ES&S), the largest election vendor for North Carolina, agreed to provide access to three voting systems it manufactures.
At the time, ES&S indicated that they would be willing to take any inspected system at a randomly selected precinct by the HFC and recertify the equipment so that there would be no cost to the BOE or county, Kidwell said.
ES&S, he said, “seemed eager” to have the inspection to relieve the public concerns about the equipment.
“We would not invade, compromise, or damage the machines,” Kidwell said in the press conference. “The only thing that would happen is the ES&S service technician would open, show us and allow us to see that there are no modems in the machines.”
According to Bell, in her statement to the HFC, neither ES&S nor the machines manufactured by Hart InterCivic (Hart) have modems, which are prohibited by state law.
After speaking with ES&S officials, Bell said in the statement that “they [ES&S] were unaware of any commitment by the company to take any accessed machines back to their headquarters for recertification.”
ES&S didn’t respond immediately to The Epoch Times in request for a statement.
