§ 163-165.9A. Voting systems: requirements for voting systems vendors; penalties. - North Carolina Statutes

§ 163‑165.9A.  Voting systems: requirements forvoting systems vendors; penalties.

(a)        Duties of Vendor. – Every vendor that has a contract toprovide a voting system in North Carolina shall do all of the following:

(1)        The vendor shall place in escrow with an independent escrowagent approved by the State Board of Elections all software that is relevant tofunctionality, setup, configuration, and operation of the voting system,including, but not limited to, a complete copy of the source and executable code,build scripts, object libraries, application program interfaces, and completedocumentation of all aspects of the system including, but not limited to,compiling instructions, design documentation, technical documentation, userdocumentation, hardware and software specifications, drawings, records, anddata. The State Board of Elections may require in its request for proposal thatadditional items be escrowed, and if any vendor that agrees in a contract toescrow additional items, those items shall be subject to the provisions of thissection. The documentation shall include a list of programmers responsible forcreating the software and a sworn affidavit that the source code includes allrelevant program statements in low‑level and high‑level languages.

(2)        The vendor shall notify the State Board of Elections of anychange in any item required to be escrowed by subdivision (1) of thissubsection.

(3)        The chief executive officer of the vendor shall sign a swornaffidavit that the source code and other material in escrow is the same beingused in its voting systems in this State. The chief executive officer shallensure that the statement is true on a continuing basis.

(4)        The vendor shall promptly notify the State Board ofElections and the county board of elections of any county using its votingsystem of any decertification of the same system in any state, of any defect inthe same system known to have occurred anywhere, and of any relevant defectknown to have occurred in similar systems.

(5)        The vendor shall maintain an office in North Carolina withstaff to service the contract.

(b)        Penalties. – Willful violation of any of the duties insubsection (a) of this section is a Class G felony. Substitution of source codeinto an operating voting system without notification as provided by subdivision(a)(2) of this section is a Class I felony. In addition to any other applicablepenalties, violations of this section are subject to a civil penalty to beassessed by the State Board of Elections in its discretion in an amount of upto one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000) per violation. A civil penaltyassessed under this section shall be subject to the provisions of G.S. 163‑278.34(e).(2005‑323, s. 2(a).)