NC has a new top elections official, with 2024 elections looming

New state elections officials — who will guide North Carolina through the 2024 elections and beyond — were sworn in Wednesday, joining the board as election workers across the state and nation grapple with concerns about election integrity and conspiracy theories.

Administering elections involves a range of duties: Making the rules for elections, training poll workers, conducting post-election audits, handling investigations into campaign finance violations and more.

That work is done by county-level staff, as well as statewide staffers at the State Board of Elections, who are themselves guided by a five-member board. Three of the board members left, including former board chairman Damon Circosta, and were replaced Wednesday.

Alan Hirsch replaced Circosta as the board chair. After the meeting, Hirsch acknowledged that with a presidential election coming up next year, the board has a lot of work in front of it.

The last presidential election was marred by false allegations of voter fraud from Republican President Donald Trump, culminating in an attack by Trump supporters on the Capitol.

Trump’s claims of fraud and accusations of a stolen election lacked evidence and were thrown out by the dozens in courts across the country. But many conservative voters and activists continue to believe them regardless.

When speaking with reporters after being named the board chair Wednesday, Hirsch carefully avoided mentioning Trump — who is again seeking the GOP nomination for president in 2024 — but he did say that the board will be hyper-focused on people’s trust in the elections.

“Everyone, no matter what their beliefs, should agree that we should all believe in this process,” Hirsch said. “Sometimes one side wins, sometimes the other side wins. But whatever the case is, it needs to be done fairly.”

In the past several years the state board has dealt with voter intimidation at the polls, as well as conspiracy theories from voters, poll watchers and even some officials.

Earlier this year the state board voted to remove two Republican officials on the Surry County Board of Elections who had baselessly challenged the results of the 2020 election. A rural area northwest of Winston-Salem, Surry County is one of the most conservative parts of the state. Trump won 75% of the vote there in 2020. Last year, a Republican leader in the county had pushed unsubstantiated claims of election fraud.

Hirsch, who now leads the five-member board charged with addressing the state’s election needs, is a former top deputy to Democratic Attorney General and Gov. Mike Easley. State law requires that the Elections Board has three members of whichever political party controls the governor’s mansion and two members from the other party.

Also on the Democratic side, Jeff Carmon is remaining on the board. Siobhan Millen, a Raleigh attorney, joined the board Wednesday to replace former member Stella Anderson, an Appalachian State University professor.

On the Republican side, Stacy “Four” Eggers is remaining on the board. He’s an attorney from Boone. Joining the board is Kevin Lewis, a Nash County attorney and local election official, who is replacing Tommy Tucker, a former state senator from Union County.

Tucker and Eggers had joined the board just weeks before the 2020 elections — after the board’s two GOP members at the time, Ken Raymond and David Black, resigned in a surprise, late-night announcement.

Their resignations came right after Raymond and Black both voted to approve a legal settlement involving the 2020 elections, to extend the deadline for mail-in ballots during the COVID-19 pandemic, that the GOP was politically opposed to.