Dare County elections director urges state changes on provisional-ballot deadlines and absentee counting; county submitted requested audits

Dare County's elections director told the board she and fellow local directors pressed lawmakers for several changes they say would ease post-election processing and reduce staff strain.

Kelly said local officials asked the General Assembly to lengthen the statutory provisional-ballot deadline to five business days (currently tighter in practice) to give elections staff adequate time to process hundreds of provisionals after a general election. "It it feels like an impossible deadline," she said of the current timeframe for processing large provisional volumes.

Officials also asked to restore a prior practice allowing earlier processing of absentee-by-mail ballots on election day (to complete abstracts for absentee counts before the 7:30 p.m. statewide close) while preventing release of results; that change, directors argue, would reduce bottlenecks and staffing conflicts during final tallying. Kelly said the proposal would permit internal completion and uploading of absentee abstracts without public release.

A third priority discussed with lawmakers was funding for replacement list-maintenance software (the county's current system, SEIMS, is outdated). Kelly said a modern replacement would be expensive: "It's millions of dollars to come up with the new program," she said, and noted her focus had been on the first two requests because they affect day-to-day processing.

Kelly also reported that the North Carolina State Auditor requested financial audits for three election years; the county submitted materials for 2025 and later provided materials for 2022 and 2024 as requested and was awaiting feedback. She said county delegations (including meetings with Ed Goodwin, Keith Kidwell and Bill Ward) were receptive and that state board staff reported overwhelmingly positive legislative feedback.

The board was reminded that the early-voting plan for the general election must be submitted by July 24 and that the board will discuss that plan at the July 21 meeting; a unanimous local vote is required to approve the plan locally before it would need to go to the state.