Republicans who took control of the North Carolina elections board a year ago have sought to clean up voter rolls and improve election security. Yet North Carolinians remain skeptical of election administration in the state, new data shows.

Nearly one-third of North Carolinians — 31.4% — say the state’s elections are becoming less trustworthy, according to a new poll conducted for Opinion Diagnostics, a Boston-based polling company run by advisors to Republican politicians in Massachusetts and North Carolina. Only 15% of the 830 respondents said trust was rising, and 44% said their opinion remained unchanged. Another 9% were unsure.

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Sam Hayes, executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, told WRAL that the board is taking steps to secure the election and earn the public’s trust. Hayes said he hopes North Carolinians tie their trust to how well the board follows the law and how smoothly elections run.

“I don't know any better way to build trust with the electorate, with folks throughout the spectrum, than to stick to the written law,” Hayes said. 

The state elections board hired Hayes last year to replace Karen Brinson Bell, who had been hired in 2019 when Democrats controlled the board. Hayes formerly worked as general counsel for the state’s past two Republican House speakers.

Hayes said local and state-level election officials have demonstrated their competence in recent elections. They counted more than 1.5 million ballots in the March primaries — up 5% from 2022 — with no major disruptions, equipment problems, or administrative issues reported across the state’s 100 counties, he said. Hayes is also spearheading the board’s effort to modernize the State Elections Information Management System to enhance its functionality and security.

The poll, conducted between April 21 and 24, also found that 64% of North Carolinians are at least somewhat concerned that election officials won’t follow procedures for counting ballots. Thirty-eight percent said they’re “very concerned.”

The poll results show the state elections board “is going to have to go really out of their way to inform the public that our elections are safe and secure,” said Patrick Sebastian, an Opinion Diagnostics partner. 

The lack of trust tracks with other polling on government entities, said David McLennan, director of the Meredith Poll in Raleigh. “The State Board of Elections, like most governmental institutions, is suffering from a crisis of confidence from citizens,” McLennan said.

He attributed the low trust to polarization and misinformation. North Carolina is a politically-divided state with 2.32 million registered Republicans, 2.31 million registered Democrats, and 3 million voters who are unaffiliated. President Donald Trump has also made disproven claims for years that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent — and the poll results show that many North Carolinians agree. 

There’s no evidence of widespread voter fraud in any recent North Carolina elections. Nevertheless, more than one-third of respondents — 36% — to the Opinion Diagnostics poll said the 2020 election was hindered by “widespread problems or fraud that affected the outcome.” Another 13% said the election suffered from “significant irregularities” that didn’t change the outcome. 

Respondents’ views of 2020 election administration in North Carolina — a state Trump carried — were more favorable. Seventeen percent agreed that the election featured “widespread problems or fraud,” while 11% said it included significant irregularities. 

“The continuing misinformation pushed by President Trump and many Republican supporters have made it virtually impossible for the State Board of Elections or the election process in North Carolina to be considered completely trustworthy,” McLennan said.

And the concerns don’t stop there. Nearly 75% of respondents said they are concerned about a cyberattack affecting North Carolina’s election results, with 39% saying they are “very concerned.” North Carolina’s ballot tabulators aren’t connected to the internet, and elections officials have explained that it would be difficult to break into them.

The poll was conducted by RightCount, an organization that says it promotes trust in the security and integrity of elections to strengthen voter confidence. Its North Carolina chapter is led largely by Republican politicians. 

The results come six months before midterm elections that could determine control of Congress, the North Carolina General Assembly and more. It also comes almost exactly a year after a new law shifted control of the North Carolina State Board of Elections from the governor, Democrat Josh Stein, to the state auditor, Republican Dave Boliek. That move has shifted some skepticism from Republicans to Democrats.

For decades, state law gave the governor’s political party a majority on the state elections board and county elections boards across the state. Then in late 2024, after Democrats won their sixth gubernatorial election since 2000, the Republican-controlled General Assembly changed state law to benefit the GOP.

The poll asked voters about their perception of that change in the law. A plurality — 43% — said it was made for “political reasons,” while 24% said it was made to “improve oversight and independence” of election administration. The other 33% were unsure.

Hayes said the state elections board hurt its credibility among many Republicans in September 2020, when the Democrat-run board agreed to a legal settlement allowing the board to create special rules for the pandemic that deviated from state law. 

The poll didn’t ask North Carolinians about that settlement, but it did ask them about the prospect of court decisions changing election rules close to an election. Almost 80% said they were at least somewhat concerned about late rule changes, while 50% said they were “very concerned.” About 17% said they were unconcerned, while 4% said they weren’t sure.

For evidence the state elections board is committed to following the law, Hayes pointed to one of the most closely-watched races in the state: Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page’s defeat of state Senate leader Phil Berger by 23 votes in the GOP primary for Berger’s senate seat. 

The GOP-run state elections board rejected an unorthodox request by Berger — one of the most powerful lawmakers in the state — to review about 220 “undervoted” ballots, which include votes for some races but not others. Berger’s campaign wanted to know if the 220 featured unrecorded votes for his race. 

Republican and Democratic election board members said they didn’t think they had the legal authority to do what Berger wants — at least, not before required random recounts were conducted.

“We stuck to the process at the state board,” Hayes said. The board “wanted to see the process play out as it was set out in statute, and then take a look at what they got back to first see what the machine recount provided.”

Recent board actions

The poll didn’t ask North Carolinians about specific election board actions. The poll did, however, ask about election-related topics that offer clues as to how North Carolinians might feel about some of the board’s decisions. 

For instance, in January, the Republican-led board signed-off on primary election plans that eliminated Sunday voting in a handful of counties and rejected proposals for polling sites on a trio of college campuses, including at NCA&T University in Greensboro, the nation's largest HBCU. Democrats on the state board said the move targeted Black voters, who are predominantly affiliated with the Democratic Party. Republicans said North Carolina already has a lengthy early-voting period and that election staffers would benefit from rest during a busy election season.

The poll found that 83% of North Carolinians support early voting in general, and a majority support the current length of the state’s early voting period: 17 days. About 53% said the early voting period should be kept the same, while 21% said it should be lengthened. Twenty percent said it should be shortened. About 5% said they were unsure.

“People really, really, very much support early voting in our state and that [support] is not going anywhere,” said Sebastian, who was an advisor to Page during his recount.

A plurality of respondents — 48% — said they plan to cast a ballot early, in person for the November election. About 39% said they plan to vote on Election Day, 5% said they plan to vote by mail, and about 8% said they’re not sure.

The state elections board is also in the process of uploading voter information — names, dates of birth and the last four digits of Social Security numbers — to a federal database intended to help local election officials identify noncitizens who are registered to vote. It’s illegal for noncitizens to vote in North Carolina elections and there’s no evidence that it occurs frequently. 

Democrats called the move unnecessary and said they worry that the process could inadvertently disenfranchise eligible voters. Republicans said they want to make sure no ineligible ballots slip through the cracks. Under rules proposed by the board, county election officials would be required to contact voters whose citizenship status is under review and give them the opportunity to correct the record.

The poll found that a majority of North Carolinians — about 54% — are at least somewhat concerned about noncitizens voting. Six percent said they were “somewhat unconcerned,” while 35.5% said they are “not at all concerned” and 2.6% said they’re not sure.

Hayes said North Carolina officials have been using federal data to check on voters' citizenship status for years. 

Noncitizens are prohibited from serving on juries. “If someone shows up when they're called for jury duty and says ‘I can't serve because I'm not a citizen,’ the county clerks turn that information over to us and we would feed it to the federal database to, in fact, confirm that those folks were not citizens,” Hayes said. “Then we begin the process of reaching out to them to remove them from the voter rolls.”

Uploading all of North Carolina’s voter information to a federal database will enable the board to check voter registrations more rapidly, Hayes said. The database has already identified about 34,000 active registrations of people who the federal government had identified as deceased, he noted.

“State and federal law require that we do routine list maintenance and the tools have not always been available,” Hayes said. 

He continued: “Quite frankly, due diligence on our end has been lacking, but I've made a commitment since taking office to achieve the most reliable, the most accurate voter rolls possible. We want to be a standard for the nation in that regard. So we're using every tool at our disposal to do that.”

Responding to Trump’s ideas 

The poll found North Carolinians leery of state election officials coordinating too much with the federal government. 

Trump said in a February interview that Congress should nationalize elections, taking them over from the states. 

Two-thirds of respondents to the North Carolina poll — 68.8% — said states should set and run their own elections with federal agencies having limited oversight roles. Only 12% said federal agencies should be the ultimate decision-makers on election administration, even if states disagree. Nineteen percent said they’re unsure.

Those responses stood out to Sebastian, the Opinion Diagnostics partner. “Even with all the questions [surrounding] the 2020 elections, the voters still want local control over their elections and they really dislike the idea of federal interference with their elections,” he said. “That's a pretty big statement for voters to make.”

In January, Trump told The New York Times that he regretted not ordering the National Guard to seize voting machines in swing states after his loss in the 2020 election. In Trump’s second term, he has deployed the National Guard to U.S. cities to crack down on crime and federal immigration agents to arrest undocumented immigrants. Immigration officials in November conducted large-scale operations in Raleigh and Charlotte, arresting hundreds of noncitizens. 

The poll found that more than 55% of North Carolinians are concerned about the deployment of National Guard troops or immigration agents at or near polling sites. Just over 40% said they’re unconcerned, while 3% were unsure.

Hayes said he doesn’t believe the Trump administration will deploy federal agents to polling sites. “We try to be prepared for any eventuality, but I also try not to deal in hypotheticals,” he said. “That has not happened. I don't believe it's likely to happen.”

Asked about Trump’s vision for nationalizing elections, the White House said Trump in the February interview was advocating for the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, which would establish the same requirements for voter identification nationwide. The poll didn’t ask about the SAVE Act, but found that more than 75% of North Carolinians support the state’s voter ID requirements. 

Trump has also called for new restrictions on mail-in voting, saying it opens the door to fraud. He opposes laws that allow voters to cast ballots by mail for any reason — a practice allowed by a majority of states, including North Carolina. State Attorney General Jeff Jackson, a Democrat, recently added North Carolina to a lawsuit challenging a Trump executive order that seeks to add new regulations for mail-in voting. More than 20 states allege that Trump’s order is an unconstitutional power grab that would disrupt upcoming elections and disenfranchise voters.

North Carolinians are divided over mail-in voting, the poll found, though a plurality view the practice favorably. A little more than 48% said mail-in voting is a convenient and secure way to vote, while acknowledging that voter ID requirements are needed to prevent fraud. Meanwhile, 42% said mail-in voting opens the door for fraud and abuse and that voting should happen in-person. Ten percent of respondents said they were unsure.