Secretary of State asks for carryforward and poll-pad replacement funding in HB1002 hearing

Michael Howe, North Dakota secretary of state, testified in the Appropriations — Education & Environment hearing on House Bill 1002 requesting carryforward authority and new one-time funding for election technology and business-portal upgrades.

Why it matters: The office’s requests include funds for an election management system, upgrades to the business filing portal (First Stop), and a $2.8 million replacement of voter check-in iPads (“poll pads”) and cradle points that the office says are no longer able to run current iOS security updates. Howe also warned that federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) grant funding supporting some election staff and technology could run out by 2028, which he said creates a need to consider state general-fund support for some election positions and ongoing maintenance.

Howe opened his testimony by describing the office as “the starting point we'd like to say for democracy and transparency.” He told the committee the agency processed 51,600 business filings in 2024 and has reduced business filing turnaround time by about 54% to roughly three days on average, crediting internal reorganization and earlier queue work by staff.

On technology and one-time funding, Howe outlined several items: carryforward authority of approximately $7.4 million for multi-year IT projects (including an election management system funded earlier with ARPA), $1 million for the First Stop portal upgrade, $1 million for a new campaign finance system, and roughly $500,000 for additional IT enhancements. The largest single hardware ask was $2.8 million to replace 1,100 check-in iPads and 170 cradle points statewide so the devices can run current iOS security updates; the office said the existing iPads date to 2019 and cannot install the latest iOS.

Howe said the replacement is limited to the voter check-in devices that connect to the central voter file, not to ballot tabulators or ballot-counting systems. He emphasized the separation: “This simply works with your identification card and our central voter file. This has nothing to do with a ballot, nothing to do with ballot tabulation, nothing to do with an election result.” He identified ES&S as the vendor that supplies tabulators and described annual licensing and maintenance fees for those machines.

On staffing, Howe said the office is currently authorized 35 FTEs, 31 of which are general-funded, but that his office has offered to return two FTEs (one general-funded and one federally funded) and can operate with 33. He explained the constraint on federally funded HAVA positions: staff paid from HAVA cannot perform some state-only duties, including certain campaign-finance work, because federal HAVA dollars are restricted to federal-election administration. Howe said the office expects HAVA funds could be exhausted by 2028 and urged planning for that possibility.

Howe also described prior audit findings as resolved and summarized outreach efforts (naturalization ceremonies and public education) and business-portal improvements. Deputy Sandy McMurray confirmed that counties track absentee-ballot rejections and related counts locally and that the state does not centrally report a percentage of absentee ballots disqualified.

What the committee did: The hearing was informational; no formal vote or appropriation decision was taken during the hearing. Howe said the office had submitted these requests to the governor’s office and that the Armstrong administration’s recommendation had not yet been released.

What’s next: HB1002 will continue through the appropriations process; committee members said they will review the slides and binders and follow up as the governor’s budget and green/purple/red budget sheets are made available.