NC hearing set to consider voting machines

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Elections officials are deciding which voting machines are cleared to use in North Carolina, and whether they must count ballots that can be checked by human eyes.

The State Board of Elections meets Friday to decide whether the only company now selling voting machines in the state can keep doing so.

Election security advocates raised concerns about the equipment marketed by Omaha, Nebraska-based Election Systems & Software because while it prints a paper ballot for voters to check, what tabulating machines actually read are undecipherable bar codes.

After hackers tried to access U.S. election systems in 2016, a study by national science and engineering experts urged “human-readable paper ballots.”

North Carolina has been working for about two years on which voting machines to allow for use over the next decade or longer.