The North Carolina State Board of Elections (SBE) is requesting public input on its planned update of its election management and campaign finance reporting software systems. The request includes a bare bones description of the systems and offers a clue as to why they are looking for updates:
Currently, the State Board maintains the Statewide Elections Information Management System (SEIMS), which was initially developed in 1998. SEIMS is the central elections management system that coordinates statewide elections processes, voter registration and voter roll list maintenance, and reporting of election results. It is used daily by the State Board and the 100 county boards of elections.
The campaign finance reporting software, developed by NCSBE in the early 2000s, enables the submission and storing of all campaign finance data and information required by the law and allows the public to access campaign finance disclosures. The State Board maintains both systems.
Those systems have been updated over the past two decades, but are still in need of further improvement. The SBE’s request for information is part of an ongoing effort to update those systems, an effort the John Locke Foundation supports.
They are also seeking input from vendors who could provide updates to the systems.
What does the SBE want to know from the public?
The request for information is required as part of the SBE’s request for proposal (RFP) to the North Carolina General Assembly for funding to continue upgrades for their software systems.
The online version of the request for information (hosted by the Office of the State Auditor) includes seven questions:
1. Please identify whether you are a public citizen or a potential vendor.
2. If you are a potential vendor who could provide services to completely replace the existing SEIMS or Campaign Finance systems with a modern, secure, redundant, and customized solution, please provide a short summary of your company’s qualifications and a list of similar projects that are completed or currently in progress.
3. What security features should the SEIMS and campaign finance software upgrades include?
4. What reporting features should the SEIMS and campaign finance software upgrades include? What dynamic reporting capabilities should be considered? What information should be available on the NCSBE’s website?
5. What transparency features should be incorporated into the SEIMS and campaign finance software?
6. Is there anything else the NCSBE should consider when preparing the RFP for the SEIMS and campaign finance software upgrades?
7. Do you have any other suggestions or comments?
The campaign finance reporting system desperately needs an upgrade
Locke has stressed the need to upgrade the campaign finance reporting system. The SBE also needs to update practices and requirements associated with campaign finance reporting. Locke noted some of the needed changes in two reports earlier this year. Those improvements include:
- Require all committees to submit digital reports. Some committees only submit images of their campaign finance reports, rather than in a data-readable format, making it more difficult to track what they are spending to support or oppose candidates (see the screenshot below).
- Track elections, not just committees. Unlike the Federal Election Commission, the SBE’s system does not allow tracking by election year, making it more difficult to keep up with independent expenditures spent on behalf of candidates.
- Require committee ID information for transactions. Committees should be required to submit the NCSBE or FEC IDs of committees with which they have transactions.
- Require electioneering communications and independent expenditure reports to declare which candidates all expenditures are in support of or opposed to. In some reports, we know how much an organization spent, but we don’t know the purpose of some of the spending.
How to give SBE your input.
You can provide your replies to the seven questions listed above in one of three ways:
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- Online portal: Request for Information | NC Office of the State Auditor (OSA)
- Email: [email protected]
- Mail: North Carolina Office of the State Auditor, 20601 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699
