RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Another chancellor in North Carolina’s public university system has announced plans to step down — this time at the state’s largest university by enrollment.

North Carolina State University Chancellor Randy Woodson declared his retirement plans at the university’s trustees meeting Thursday, capping off nearly 15 years in his role. His term will officially end June 30, 2025, Woodson said.

His departure marks yet another chancellor vacancy in the University of North Carolina system that is in the process of filling three other openings, including the state’s flagship campus, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Seventeen schools are members of the system.

“I feel good about leaving the institution better than I found it, but I also feel good that the next leader has plenty to do at NC State,” Woodson said during the meeting. “This is a great place.”

With his contract ending next June, Woodson told reporters it was “just a good time” for him to step away from being chancellor. Retirement was something the 67-year-old said he considered for a while.

Woodson received a two-year contract extension in 2021 that allowed him to serve until 2025 — something UNC System President Peter Hans said he “twisted his arm at the time to stay.”

“When I think about where NC State was 15 years and where NC State is now, it’s an extraordinary testament to this man’s leadership and the team he has built around him,” Hans told reporters after the meeting.

Woodson started in his role as NC State chancellor in 2010. He previously came from Purdue University, where he served as provost, dean of the agriculture college and in various other leadership positions.

Under his long tenure at NC State, Woodson led the university in increasing graduation and retention rates and research funding. The university’s enrollment also has grown to more than 37,000 students as of Fall 2023.

His term included radical changes in the college athletics landscape, including the Atlantic Coast Conference adding the University of Pittsburgh and Syracuse University in all sports, adding the University of Notre Dame in all non-football league sports, as well as the league’s move to add Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, and Southern Methodist University this year.

He is the university’s third longest-serving chancellor and one of the longest currently serving in the university system.

Although he doesn’t have immediate plans for what’s next after his chancellorship, Woodson said he intends to stay in Raleigh.

Woodson’s announcement means yet another chancellor search for the UNC system to embark on after filling four openings in the last year. Those new chancellors now lead four universities: James Martin at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Karrie Dixon at North Carolina Central University, Bonita Brown at Winston-Salem State University and Kimberly van Noort at UNC-Asheville.

Three other universities currently have chancellor openings: Appalachian State University, Elizabeth City State University and UNC-Chapel Hill. Appalachian State’s former Chancellor Sheri Everts was the most recent chancellor to step down in April.

The search for UNC-Chapel Hill’s new chancellor — a position opened after former Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz left in January — progressed further on Wednesday when search committee members started considering candidates. The chancellorship is currently held by Interim Chancellor Lee Roberts, who GOP legislative leaders have signaled support in becoming the next chancellor.

The search committee has been “aggressively in the market” for several weeks to find suitable candidates, but competition with other universities conducting chancellor searches has presented challenges, said Laurie Wilder, head of search firm Parker Executive Search, during the meeting.

Hans told reporters after the meeting that he thought the high turnover of chancellors could be partly attributed to university leaders postponing their departures to ensure administrations ran smoothly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Associated Press writer Aaron Beard in Raleigh contributed to this report.

A new state-by-state scorecard of women’s health released this week by the Commonwealth Fund raises concerns over the care women receive and the ripple effects of the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

The “2024 State Scorecard on Women’s Health and Reproductive Care” is based on 32 measures of state health systems and examines how state policy actions are changing the way women can access and use health care.

“Based on the evidence and data, one thing is absolutely clear, women’s health is in a very fragile state,” said Dr. Joseph Betancourt, president of the Commonwealth Fund, during a briefing with reporters on Wednesday. “There are stark disparities in women’s access to quality health care among states across racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic lines. Those inequities are longstanding, no doubt, but recent policy choices and judicial decisions restricting access to reproductive care have and may continue to exacerbate them.”

Rates of maternal deaths were highest in the Mississippi Delta region, which includes Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee. North Carolina’s rates for maternal deaths while pregnant and for infant mortality were both above the national average.

Eighteen percent of North Carolina women aged 18-64 reported being in fair or poor health based on the data from 2022.

More than 1 in 5 women in our state (21%) reported having 14 of more poor mental health days in the past month.

North Carolina performed best on women who were up to date on colon cancer screenings.

Such screenings are critically important as deaths from breast and cervical cancer are considered preventable and treatable for women who receive timely screening and follow-up health care.

Researchers found that Black women experienced higher breast cancer mortality than white women due to a variety of factors, including poorer quality of care after an abnormal test, or a diagnosis made at a more advanced stage.

The scorecard also found deaths among women of reproductive age are highest in southeastern states. Causes of death included pregnancy related complications and other preventable causes such as substance use, COVID-19, and treatable chronic conditions.

The uninsured rates among women in the U.S. ranged from 2.5% to over 20% with the highest uninsured rates in states that have not expanded their Medicaid programs.

North Carolina expanded its Medicaid coverage on December 1, 2023. Just last week the NC Department of Health and Human Services announced the enrollment of more than 500,000 North Carolinians in the seven months since the program was launched.

“Each of those 500,000 who now have the peace of mind to be able to face some of the greatest challenges that they ever thought they could face and know that they are not alone,” said North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kody Kinsley in marking the milestone.

But while North Carolina has made progress in expanding health care access, 10 states have yet to expand eligibility for Medicaid. That leaves nearly 800,000 women uninsured.

A maternity care desert made worse by Dobbs ruling

The Commonwealth Fund experts said access to care isn’t just about having coverage, it’s also about being able to get to a service provider when care is needed.

“It’s estimated that over five million women (nationwide) already live in a county that’s considered a maternity care desert, meaning there’s no hospital or birth center offering obstetric care and there are no obstetric providers,” explained David Radley, Ph.D., a senior scientist for the Commonwealth Fund.

Twenty percent of women in North Carolina age 18-44 said they did not have a person who was their personal or primary health care provider.

Abortion bans are also having an impact on the care that women receive, said Sara Collins, the Commonwealth Fund’s vice president for health care coverage and tracking health system performance.

“A clear pattern in the study is states that have had abortion restrictions prior to Dobbs rank lower and a lot of our measures, including having adequate numbers of maternal health care providers,” Collins shared. “We’re seeing post-Dobbs the effect that decision is having on states delivery systems. We’re seeing lower residency applications in states with abortion bans from new medical students.”

So, is there going to be a growing divide across the states between those that have left abortion legal and those that have enacted the tightest restrictions?

“I think that time will tell,” Collins said.

North Carolina’s legislature enacted a 12-week abortion ban in 2023 and could move toward a six-week ban in 2025.

What researchers do know now is that states in which a large share of residents are living in rural areas, there tend to be the fewest obstetric providers.

Fewer providers means that patients face barriers in receiving the full continuum of prenatal and postnatal care.

Elections will shape future health access

How women’s health fares in the future could very well depend on the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) not only expanded Medicaid and provided subsidies the help lower-income families, but it also banned insurers in the individual market from charging young women higher premiums than young men. The ACA also required insurers to cover maternity care –something that was not guaranteed prior to the law.

After more than 60 failed Republican-led votes to repeal Obamacare, experts believe a scenario could emerge if the GOP takes control of Congress and the White House in 2025 that would involve passage of legislation requiring slimmed down plans and fewer guaranteed benefits. It remains unclear if insurers would be allowed to deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions.

“While some states undoubtedly are championing women’s continued access to vital health and reproductive services, many others are failing to ensure that women can get and afford the health care they need. The failure is having a disproportionate impact on women of color and women with low incomes,” said Betancourt.

Click here to read the 2024 State Scorecard on Women’s Health and Reproductive Care for North Carolina.

Who says Republicans, Democrats, independent voters, progressives, conservatives, moderates and people from across the political spectrum cannot work together? It can happen.

North Carolina is again expected to be a close battleground state in the race between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. Angry political divisions are at the forefront of the national conversation, as we barrel toward the November general election just four months away.

A statewide elections commission I am serving with, however, has been a welcome breath of fresh air. Its encouraging findings should help bring down the temperature, at least for us here in the Old North State.

More: Trump rally shooting joins a frightening list of presidential assassinations, attempts

Who says Republicans, Democrats, independent voters, progressives, conservatives, moderates and others from across the political spectrum cannot work together? It can happen.

The Commission on the Future of North Carolina Elections is conducting a deep dive into how our state runs elections. It is a project of the NC Network for Fair, Safe & Secure Elections, in partnership with Catawba College in Salisbury and the international The Carter Center, headquartered in Atlanta. 

At a time when the two major political parties are accusing each other of undermining democracy, our group is meant to find common ground on elections and help strengthen democracy close to home — and model it for other states. Election officials, professors, local and statewide politicians, nonprofit leaders and others formed 11 specialized committees that looked at everything from mail-in ballots to early voting, to ballot security and voter access and registration. 

After the Trump rally shooting

Committee chairs presented our draft findings Monday inside at the rather stunning and eco-awesome Center for the Environment on the campus of Catawba College in Salisbury. The previously scheduled meeting was two days after Donald Trump was grazed by a bullet in an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. It was a stark reminder for me that we have to come together as a country or we’ll fall apart, and the incident, where one attendee was killed and two others injured, imbued our commission’s work with a sense of urgency. 

More: We saw the long-term effects of violence in Northern Ireland: The U.S. can avoid the abyss

Chris Cooper, a political science and public affairs professor at Western Carolina University and author of the soon-to-be published “Anatomy of a Purple State” summed it up, during his remarks Monday.

“This really has worked remarkably well,” he said. “And what really made me think tha, is I have no idea of the party affiliation of folks, at least on the committees that I was on. If they told me to guess the party IDs of these people, I wouldn’t do very well.” 

I can say the same. 

Consensus opinion: We do alright in NC

The draft findings represent months of work, and we will not finish until early next year. Any recommendations we make would be advisory: State lawmakers decide the election laws, and state and local boards of elections make the decisions about the mechanics of executing those laws.

More: Pitts: A Fayetteville business with a unique Ukraine-Russia alliance. How it happened.

The consensus opinion on the commission appears to be that North Carolina runs secure elections and runs them extremely well, and most of the committees’ suggestions were tweaks versus a radical overhaul. If you want to hear more about it, a 2024 Trusted Elections Tour will stop at more than two dozen locations across the state over the summer and fall, with a final, virtual tour scheduled for Oct. 15.

Meanwhile, I heard some interesting findings on Monday from my fellow commission members — and thought I’d share. 

NC Republicans used to cast lots of mail-in ballots. That changed.

Mail-in ballots, also called absentee mail-in ballots, have become a bone of contention nationally, as some politicians, especially Republicans, have questioned their potential for voter fraud.

From 2004 to 2016, Republicans were the largest block of voters in North Carolina who cast mail-in ballots, with their share ranging from 40% to 54%. This, according to findings from the Counting Votes Committee, and presented Monday by Shawnee Seese, secretary of the Orange County Board of Elections.

That voting pattern however, changed. From 2018 to 2022, Democrats moved into the plurality with the share ranging from 41% to 44%.

White voters by far cast more mail-in ballots

In North Carolina, mail-in ballots are cast by white, non-Hispanic voters in much larger proportions than other races combined, according to Seese, citing analysis from party registration data. In 2020, 68% of mail-in ballots were cast by white voters. The number has been higher in the past: 89% of mail-ins were cast by white voters in 2008. By comparison, just 3% of absentee mail-in ballots were cast by minority voters, looking at data over the last 30 years.

NC voted heavy in 2020

The 2020 November presidential election drew 7.5 million registered voters to the poll — and remember, that was during the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic. This number translates to 75% of registered voters who cast ballots, according to Michael Bitzer, a Catawba politics and history professor, and a leader on the commission, who crunched state election figures.

North Carolina had one of the closest races in the country that year, with Donald Trump defeating Joe Biden by 1.34%. 

NC runs very secure elections

North Carolina elections are “very secure” both in terms of protecting the election from hackers and how ballots are handled, said Col. (retired) James Hardaway, with the Ballot Security, Cybersecurity and List Maintenance Committee. Hardaway served in Army intelligence for 27 years and after retirement moved into cybersecurity and modernizing systems.

“I’m trained to see the bad things that can happen in technology,” he said. “I’m very secure in how I feel about our elections. The public is not.”

He said there was a need for more voter education.

North Carolina voters use paper ballots and its voting systems are relatively simple, which Hardaway said was an advantage in terms of security.

“One ballot per voter really helps when technology fails,” he said. “You need something a voter touched to really prove that their vote was there.”

And he added in North Carolina, “No system that touches a ballot can touch the internet.”

Threats to NC election workers — up

Like elsewhere, threats to our state’s elections workers have been rising: 25% of N.C. election workers have reported threats over the last two years, said Leslie Garvin, executive director of North Carolina Campus Engagement and chair of the Election Infrastructure and Administration Committee.

Eighteen states have specific legal protections for election workers, Garvin said, but North Carolina is not one. 

‘Brain drain’ of elections veterans

The state is facing a “brain drain” of leadership on its local elections boards, Garvin reported. Her comments were probably the most concerning for me as the state prepares for the political equivalent of the Super Bowl.

Sixty-one of the state’s 100 elections directors have turned over in the last five years, and 10 counties lost directors in 2023, Garvin said. Many election staffers have also retired or burned out, in part related to increased anger and scrutiny from the public. County elections boards statewide face recruiting challenges, she said.

The rise of the unaffiliated voter 

In March of 2022, North Carolina voters who registered as unaffiliated became the largest block of voters in the state, followed by Democrats and then Republicans. In some respects, this seismic development establishes the state’s purple status as much as anything else — a lot of Tar Heels are looking at the two parties on the menu and deciding, “none of the above.”

That does not mean unaffiliated voters, and most especially, unaffiliated candidates, have more power at the ballot box. Just the opposite.

Candidates who do not claim one of the state’s eight recognized parties, even in local races, have to collect an often intimidating amount of signatures just to get their name on the ballot. (Whereas people who claim a party affiliation can be added at the cost of a fee.)

The bigger the race, the more steep the signature requirement. Shelane Etchison, an Army Special Forces veteran who lives in Moore County, became the first unaffiliated congressional candidate in state history after collecting more than 7,500 signatures from registered voters in her district. 

“I feel like our country is thirsty and hungry for different candidate options, and the numbers show it,” she told WUNC in an interview earlier this month.  “I’ve been unaffiliated for quite some years now, and 35% of the people in this district are unaffiliated as well.” 

In the race for the 9th Congressional District, which represents part of Fayetteville, Etchison faces incumbent Republican Rep. Richard Hudson; and Democratic challenger Nigel Bristow.

Legislators could pick a winner in statewide races

A vaguely worded statute in the state Constitution (Article 6, Section 5) could allow the N.C. General Assembly, the state legislature, to choose a winner if the results of a runoff election are challenged, according to Bob Orr, retired N.C. Supreme Court justice, in his report from the Committee on Challenges and Lawsuits. The action would apply to races that include the governor’s race and statewide races for the Council of State, such as treasurer and secretary of state, which are roughly equivalent to cabinet positions.

That the state legislature could pick a winner was shocking to learn for many of us on the elections commission. 

“This has only been done once in the history of North Carolina,” Orr said, “That was back in 2004 in a race for superintendent of public instruction.”

Under the process, the House and Senate would form a five-person committee with three from one party, two from the other.

“At the end of it, the General Assembly will determine who won that election,” Orr said. “And we’re coming up in an election cycle in which it is not inconceivable there will be very close races for Council of State elections; the public needs to be informed.” 

Opinion Editor Myron B. Pitts can be reached at mpitts@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3559.