NC NEWSLINE - A new nonprofit in North Carolina will focus on spreading accurate information about how elections are run at a particularly volatile time when questions about vote counting and who gets to cast a ballot are increasing.
Keep Our Republic will host community conversations around the state on the “nuts and bolts” of the election process, from casting a ballot to certification, election security and even the use of artificial intelligence, said Deanna Ballard, a former Republican state senator who is Keep Our Republic’s North Carolina senior advisor.
‘It’s really having some of those conversations at the local level that help inform and engage those active community members who are going out to vote, leading into the 2026 general election but also the ‘28 cycle as well,” Ballard said.
Keep Our Republic is nonpartisan, said Executive Director Ari Mittleman.
It has Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliated voters on its North Carolina advisory council, including former Republican Gov. Jim Martin, former Democratic state Rep. Grier Martin, and Paul Brintley, a church pastor and former GOP state House candidate.
Also on the advisory board are experts who know elections administration inside out, including Kimberly Strach, a former state elections director, Paul Cox, a former state elections board general counsel, Damon Circosta, a former state elections board chairman, and retired Wilkes County elections director Kimberly Caudill.
Western Carolina University political scientist Chris Cooper and Duke University professor of the practice Asher Hildebrand are also on the advisory council.
The state has seen recent similar efforts. The North Carolina Network for Fair, Safe, and Secure Elections, supported by the Carter Center, held community meetings meant to foster confidence in elections from 2022-2024. Former Republican Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr and former Democratic Charlotte Mayor Jennifer Roberts headlined that effort.
“I think we are all rowing in the same direction and in similar boats,” Middleton said.
Keep Our Republic has worked in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and is expanding into North Carolina and Georgia.
President Donald Trump narrowly lost Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia in 2020 and he continues to challenge the results. In January, the FBI seized 2020 election documents in Fulton County, Ga., and hundreds of FBI analysts are examining those records, according to the Georgia Recorder, as Trump pursues baseless claims that voter fraud cost him that election.
In North Carolina, election skeptics have also continued to make claims about noncitizen voters, pushing lawmakers to make administrative changes that voting rights advocates say are suppression tactics.
Keep Our Republic has experience hosting public forums in states with deep divisions, Mittleman said. Attendees leave with an understanding about election administration and election security, he said.
“Generally, with the four dozen-plus events that we’ve done in those states — sometimes 50 people in a firehouse, sometimes 300 people in a county government center — I think people have left thinking it was an evening well spent,” he said.
