North Carolina selects vendor for stopgap upgrade to elections system

North Carolina’s elections director announced Wednesday that the state has selected ReFrame Solutions, a Connecticut firm that also helps states comply with federal broadband grant rules, to develop upgrades to the state’s elections system.

For the cost of $4.66 million, Reframe Solutions is tasked with providing security and functionality updates to a computer system developed in 1998, a stopgap project before the state will prepare a full-scale revamp over the next two years. North Carolina’s State Elections Information Management System is, to hear it from the state’s elections board, coded in an unsupported programming language, clunky to operate and challenging to maintain.

Sam Hayes, executive director of the state’s elections board, said in a press release that ReFrame Solutions was selected, through a “rigorous and highly competitive selection process,” for its “innovative approach and commitment to security, usability and transparency.” The state, the release continued, followed a “thorough and highly technical” evaluation process (of six vendors who responded to a request for proposals published last December, according to Carolina Journal), that included interviews and “a detailed scoring system.”

The system, which is often referred to as SEIMS, is used by officials to coordinate statewide elections processes, voter registration, voter roll maintenance and election results reporting. At a state elections board meeting Wednesday, Hayes said that upgrading SEIMS has been his top priority, particularly in light of the difficulty the state faces in maintaining and securing it.

Officials said the first two phases of the system’s full upgrade, which will require a second procurement process, to begin later this year, will cost $15 million and, according to the state’s press materials, represent “the biggest overhaul of election data management” in North Carolina’s history. The bigger upgrade will feature “enhanced security features,” “improved usability” for the state elections board and North Carolina’s 100 county election boards, “modernized workflows” and “greater transparency and public access to election data.”

The vendor was selected with aid from a commission, announced this month by the state auditor, primarily composed of county elections directors and board members. Their work has been motivated by an outdated system sure to face scrutiny, along with those operated by all other states, during the November midterm election. The Carolina Journal reported last October that North Carolina carried 75,000 voters on its registration repair list, a tally of voters without driver’s license numbers or partial Social Security numbers recorded on their voter registrations. The Journal also reported a technical glitch that led some counties to inadvertently send registration letters to some voters.