After finally getting the EMAIL notification from the Secretary of State that it was time to make the second journey downtown to take the official oaths of office (which was delayed about a month by my own epic brain fart), today was the day that I’d take up the commission as an Electronic Notary Public.
This is a relatively new enhancement for a traditional notary where the entire notarial act is done electronically using an approved technology rather than using the traditional seal on paper. Long story short, the only difference between them is the tools that are utilised…eNotary still requires personal appearance, ID verification, and filling out the certificate and applying an electronic signature/seal using software approved by the NC Secretary of State (think DocuSign or something like it but on steroids!).
In July, only an Electronic Notary Public will be commissioned to perform a remote notarization as the Emergency Video Notarization process (which any commissioned notary could perform) will retired in favour of it’s successor procedure at the end of June. The Secretary is still working out the regulations to implement the Remote Electronic Notarization Act (RENA) but I figured it’d be best to go ahead and get the additional class and commission done in case it’s something that will be worth doing when the new provisions of Chapter 10B come into play.
Renewing both commissions in 2028 will be a bit interesting and was the inspiration for bringing a new category of posts into existence: Crossing the I’s and Dotting the T’s.
These posts are devoted to the joys of bureaucracy ranging from the merely inconvenient and annoying to those Kafkaesque bureaucratic obstructions that could only have been dreamed up by people who were toilet trained at gunpoint. And that’s the inside joke of the category name because bureaucratic hurdles are often enough to make one want to cross their eyes as a result of the aggravation and frustration.
This one is definitely on the inconvenient and annoying end of the scale rather than the fevered nightmare procedure from someone practised in the arts of OCD. 🙂
The reason I had to go downtown and essentially repeat the two oaths of office I’d already done earlier this year is that being an electronic notary is a separate commission from the Secretary only available after being commissioned as a traditional notary (with it’s own set of application and Register of Deeds fees to essentially act as a notary as they’re administering the oaths) but the two commissions share the same expiry date.
Where this gets interesting is at the time both commissions must be renewed.
As it stands right now, a renewing notary can elect to sit the required examination rather than take the class and should they pass, off the application goes and then they head to the Register of Deeds to do the oath.
ENotary renewal currently requires attending the class and sitting the examination and then putting through that application and doing the oath with it’s separate set of fees.
Up to now, this likely hasn’t been much of a problem as the number of electronic notaries compared to the traditional ones was quite small. But those early adopters of electronic notarization that came in prior to and especially during the COVID-19 lockdowns will start coming into range of their commission renewal dates.
The Secretary might well find that a hybrid refresher class that would allow someone to revise and sit both examinations in one session would make these dual-renewals much less of a hassle, particularly as more and more notaries are taking the additional commission for electronic notary.
They’re already going to have to revamp the existing classes to deal with the massive changes in the law governing the activities of the notaries and I suspect that there will be a new edition of the book that we are required to have at hand which was last revised in 2016.
And of course, whilst it’d be lovely to have a break on the application fees, I don’t really see that having any chance of happening. I love my native state but the state government is very reluctant to let go of fees they’ve gotten their hands on them! 🙁
Fortunately, that’s a problem I don’t have to worry about for the next 4.5 years! 🙂