With just weeks now until the November Election Day, the North Carolina State Board of Elections is starting a voter confidence campaign.
State officials said the idea is to provide regular updates on efforts to ensure that when a voter votes, the vote counts and the election has not been tampered with.
In Mecklenburg County, Elections Director Michael Dickerson praised the state board for getting the effort started.
“We’ve had so much talk out there about bad actors, foreign actors playing in the system,” he said.
Dickerson added the county was fortunate to have a skilled IT team that works hard to combat any attempts to hack into the election systems.
“We do that by keeping things off the internet and we do that by making sure the equipment is audited and make sure everything is right and correct,” Dickerson said.
He added Homeland Security officials came to the local office to do their own check on election security and found no potential problems.
The county will move to purchase new voting equipment before the North Carolina Primary early next year.
Dickerson said the county is leaning towards the ESS Express Vote system that will print a paper ballot after a voter makes choices on a touch screen. That ballot is then fed into a reader for the final tally.
Before a final decision is made on the purchase a sample of the new machine will be used in next month's election in one Charlotte precinct.