After voter search tool restored, NC elections board says Democrats spread misinformation

RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) — The North Carolina State Board of Elections says a system failure over the weekend is fixed, and people voting in the General Election on Tuesday won’t be impacted.

The temporary interruption was in the State Board of Elections Voter Search Tool, which dropped offline for several hours for much of the state.

State Board of Elections Executive Director Sam Hayes said, “From our CIO Brett Kelly, this had to do with an update to the SEIMS system that was necessary to meet deadlines for candidate filing for next year’s election.”

According to Hayes, voters were not impacted, contrary to a statement from North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton. In her statement over the weekend, Clayton said that poll workers were having trouble registering voters on Saturday.

“It’s just simply misinformation,” Hayes said. “There’s no place for this, it just doesn’t serve the public interest to put out false statements like this.”

In the statement, Democrats also criticized Republican State Auditor Dave Boliek’s oversight of the board of elections.

Boliek responded on Monday, saying, “It’s political actors who seem to feel like they need to politicize every single thing for their own personal gain for whatever reason.”

Since taking on oversight of the State Board of Elections, Boliek said he worked with Hayes to make every step of elections secure.

On Friday, the Office of the State Auditor opened a portal to get public comment on modernization efforts for the state board.

“It’s a total effort to be transparent with the process,” Boliek said. “It’s really important on election integrity that we be as transparent as possible. This is a really good step toward transparency for the public as we move forward with the modernization effort.”

Even outside of the weekend’s hiccup, both Boliek and Hayes said their top priority is election integrity and transparency.

“I don’t think there’s anything more important that we do here when we’re interfacing with voters of the state and making sure our elections are secure,” Hayes said.

We reached out to the state Democratic Party about Hayes and Boliek’s comments. When we last heard from them, they said a statement was not available.