9 Investigates: Election officials ensure accurate, secured voter count

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Elections officials across North Carolina are facing more scrutiny as Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump continues to tell supporters the November election may be rigged.

A bipartisan team in Mecklenburg County will soon begin inspecting and testing more than 2,200 voting machines that will be used in the fall elections.

That’s just one precaution being taken to ensure an accurate count.

“We have a team in Mecklenburg of over 100 people that are make sure elections aren’t rigged,” Kristin Mavromatis, with the Board of Elections, said.

She said each machine has triple memory systems and a redundant paper log of all voting activity.

She also pointed out that the machines are not networked with one another so that any hacker attempting to manipulate software or results would have to access each machine individually, all of which are stored in a secure area complete with video monitoring. 

In addition, the results from those machines are fed into a single computer at election headquarters that has no internet connection. 

"So, should someone were to try to tamper with that one computer they would have to physically be in the office where we have an armed guard," Mavromatis said.

Mavromatis said elections workers test the machines before an election and then compare various voting records with the machine results afterward.

Another systemwide audit is also conducted in the days after the election.

Those multiple layers of security provide for accuracy the Board of Elections said should reassure local voters. 

Still, concerns remain. 

A poll out just this week by PPP showed 69 percent of Trump supporters say if Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton wins the election in November, they believe it will be because the election was rigged for her.

Cox Media Group