NC Republicans avoid ‘Kraken’ tactics but seek new inspection of 2020 voting machines

North Carolina Republican politicians hoping to conduct their own audit of the 2020 elections don’t want to resort to legal action to try to force the State Board of Elections to let them have their way, they said Thursday.

The lawmakers could try to force their will on elections officials by issuing subpoenas, for instance. But Rep. Keith Kidwell, a Beaufort County Republican who leads the far-right Freedom Caucus in the N.C. House of Representatives, said he’d rather not.

“We honestly don’t want to have to go that route,” he said. “I think a spirit of cooperation is all we seek.”

The News & Observer reported Wednesday that state elections officials, behind the scenes, have been blocking the Freedom Caucus in its efforts to take apart voting machines that were used last year.

Caucus members want to look for illegal, internet-connected modems that may have been inserted into the machines to let someone remotely change vote counts. But they also admit they have no evidence that any such modems exist.

“I’m very hopeful and very confident that there’ll be nothing,” Kidwell said.

But now that the elections board won’t let them open the machines, Kidwell and the Freedom Caucus have begun questioning whether state elections director Karen Brinson Bell or others are trying to hide something. So on Thursday morning, they called a press conference.

“Mrs. Brinson Bell has decided to put up a wall,” Kidwell said. “And we plan to go through that wall.”

She previously told Kidwell, in a letter denying his request to open the machines that was first reported on by The News & Observer, that letting anyone tamper with voting machines would create massive security concerns. And that, she said, would require all the machines to be replaced at taxpayer expense.

‘No credible evidence’

Brinson Bell, who was appointed by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, also implied that the Republican audit attempt might just be an effort to purposefully spread false claims about elections. Former President Donald Trump and his allies spread numerous false claims about voter fraud during and after the 2016 and 2020 elections.

“We will not allow misinformation about voting systems or any other aspect of elections to dictate our priorities in administering elections,” Brinson Bell wrote to Kidwell. “... We do not intend to partake in, nor perpetuate, myths and falsehoods about voting systems or elections.”

However, the push here has been different, in at least some ways, from the attempts by conservatives in other states to try to claim that the 2020 election was rigged.

One big difference: Trump won in North Carolina, which complicates matters for Republican politicians who say their constituents are worried about anti-Trump fraud. On Thursday a reporter asked Kidwell if he had proof, or even had gotten tips, that any elections were rigged in North Carolina.

“Let’s be clear about that: No. What we have are concerns from the public,” Kidwell said. “We’re here, each one of us represents somewhere around 80,000 people. I think each one of us can tell you — email after email, phone calls and concerns, voiced at meetings nationwide, that our elections are not secure. We want to show that they are. Truly.”

Brinson Bell said there’s already proof that North Carolina’s elections are secure: Officials did an audit after the election, as always, and neither they nor anyone else has found any evidence of problems.

“The State Board has received no credible evidence that the certified results are not accurate, and elected officials from both sides of the aisle have stated that the 2020 general election in North Carolina was conducted fairly,” she said.

Difference from ‘Kraken’ claims

Like North Carolina, nearly every state in the country conducts an audit after every election. The six that don’t, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures — Alabama, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, New Hampshire and South Dakota — nearly all voted for Trump in 2020.

And although states’ audits all found that the 2020 results were legitimate, Trump and various allies have continued claiming the election was rigged. Such claims have now failed in court dozens of times, including at the Republican-majority United States Supreme Court.

But a lack of proof hasn’t stopped the misinformation from spreading, often with the encouragement of top GOP officials.

The North Carolina Republican Party, for instance, invited Trump to speak at its annual convention this summer. He once again repeated his false claim that the election was stolen, to loud cheers from the crowd, which was filled with people wearing clothing or waving signs about a rigged election.

Many Freedom Caucus members were at the convention, but now they are trying to walk a finer line, saying Thursday they’re just asking questions. On Facebook, however, the group has said in numerous posts that state or county elections officials might have tried to rig elections here.

When asked about that, Kidwell quickly interjected that they never named anyone specific. He later said he thinks there was fraud in 2020, but probably not enough to have actually changed the results of any race.

The Freedom Caucus also has been careful not to levy any allegations against the voting machine manufacturers themselves — which has been a recipe for big lawsuits against other Republicans.

Some of the lawyers and other Trump allies associated with the so-called “Kraken” team have since been sued for $1 billion by Dominion, a voting machine company they accused of various outlandish conspiracies. Some have also since been stripped of their ability to practice law or are in the middle of disciplinary hearings in various states due to their dubious legal filings.

Dominion doesn’t operate in North Carolina, however. And the local Freedom Caucus group has been careful to avoid similar accusations against ES&S, the company that makes virtually all of the voting machines used in North Carolina.

“So far, we have just investigated and fully cleared the ES&S machines used specifically in North Carolina,” the Freedom Caucus wrote on Facebook earlier this month — a point Kidwell reiterated Thursday.

And while Dominion does not operate in North Carolina, that didn’t stop some Republican politicians from spreading conspiracies theories about Dominion rigging races here in the aftermath of the election. Kidwell directly addressed those conspiracy theories in an interview Wednesday and again in a press conference Thursday. He said the Freedom Caucus has told its followers not to believe them.

For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Under the Dome politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it at link.chtbl.com/underthedomenc or wherever you get your podcasts.

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