GREENSBORO, N.C. — Everyone is in line at your polling place, you usually say your name and address, but no one is announcing what your political affiliation is.
Then you go into the ballot box, you vote, and no one can see who you are voting for. But with so much technology, could someone find out who you voted for online? The short answer is no.
The North Carolina State Board of Elections has a Voter Search tool. It helps you figure out where your polling place is, and what your sample ballot looks like. But it's public. You can put in your name or someone else's name and it will pull up a page that shows the name and address as well as how the voter is registered and in what county.
If you scroll down on the page, you'll eventually see a list of the elections the person voted in and whether they voted in person, early, or absentee. The voter history does not show who you voted for or how you voted in the general election.
However, in the primaries, it will tell which party ballot you choose to use.
"Those voters are going to get the option they're going to be asked and they can choose to vote in the Democratic primary or the Republican primary. Not a mixture but one of the other," said Charlie Collicutt, Guilford County Board of Elections Supervisor.
The voter history shows this choice for voters who are registered Republican, Democrat, and Unaffiliated. Why? Because in North Carolina, Unaffiliated voters have to choose a party for the primaries.
You might be wondering, just how long has voting information been public? The answer is, always. This is nothing new, but you can know for sure, no matter what you read on social media or what someone tells you, voter search does not show who you voted for. It does not list the candidates.
So vote, knowing it is yours and yours to know only.