This year’s municipal election isn’t expected to bring a great deal of controversy – but next year’s midterms certainly will: Accusations and court filings will be flying leading up to, during, and after the 2026 election.
Still, every year – and before every election – county election boards across North Carolina are required by law to show that their voting machines are in good working order.
Forsyth County, for instance, is publicizing that process in advance of its November municipal election. The Forsyth County Board of Elections announced it will begin testing its machines on Thursday, Oct. 2 in Winston-Salem.
Those tests are open to public observation.
Under state law, county election boards must conduct what’s known as a “logic and accuracy” test before each election. That involves a simulated election where ballots are marked in predetermined ways and then fed through the machines to confirm the results come out exactly as they should.
Machines that don’t meet the test requirements can’t be deployed.
Guilford County Board of Elections Director Charlie Collicutt said that, while Guilford County doesn’t put out a press release like Forsyth does, the local board also conducts those same public tests. He said the dates are posted on Guilford County’s elections website and anyone can attend.
Collicutt noted that he also reaches out to party officials and others he knows are interested in observing the tests. He said we the Guilford County Board of Elections do one before the primary and will conduct another before the November general election.
The process is straightforward: election staff feed in a set of votes with known outcomes, and then the machines publicly tabulate the results. The totals have to match exactly. The demonstration shows the machines are scanning correctly and producing accurate counts.
These local tests are part of a statewide system of checks that North Carolina has put in place to reassure voters that ballots will be counted accurately. The state’s elections law requires every county to perform pre-election testing, but adds on many other safeguards as well.
For instance, after each election counties are required to conduct a hand-to-eye audit of a randomly selected contest. That means actual paper ballots are pulled and counted by hand to make sure the totals match what the machines reported.
The results of those audits are reported publicly and sent to the State Board of Elections.
Also, North Carolina law mandates that every ballot cast in the state be on paper. Even if a voter uses a touch screen ballot marking device, the machine prints a paper ballot that can be reviewed by the voter before being fed into a tabulator.
Election officials say this ensures there’s always a verifiable paper trail.
The machines themselves are tested at multiple stages. Counties run their local “logic and accuracy” tests, and the State Board of Elections conducts separate certification and acceptance testing before machines can be used in a polling place.
Machines aren’t connected to the internet, and security seals are placed on all access points before they’re delivered to polling sites.
As attention begins to turn toward 2026, those layers of security will become more and more critical for those who will contest the results.
