North Carolina’s Republican-led election board makes it easier to reject ballots

The Republican-led North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) approved a plan Thursday to make it significantly easier for county election officials to throw out votes.

The rule change — which passed in a 3-2 vote along partisan lines — lowers the threshold for rejecting the form voters submit when they don’t have photo ID. 

Previously, the local election board would need a unanimous vote to reject that form and, in effect, throw out the accompanying ballot. Now, members of local boards will only need a simple majority vote — likely a boon for Republicans in many counties.

The new rule is just the latest fallout from the GOP’s partisan takeover of the NCSBE last year. 

Since then, Republicans have stripped Gov. Josh Stein (D) of election oversight duties and handed them to State Auditor Dave Boliek (R), who installed GOP operatives at the state board and in his own office. That has even been controversial among some local GOP election officials.

Now Democrats are sounding the alarm about NCSBE’s latest attack on voting.

Siobhan O’Duffy Millen, one of two Democrats on the board, argued the rule change will inject partisanship into the process of counting votes.

“I think that is highly destructive to voters’ trust in elections,” she said during the meeting.

Jeff Carmon, the second Democrat on the board, argued the rule change is motivated by the national GOP’s big lie: that election fraud is widespread and unchecked. 

“I think we need to really be careful, as well as be prepared, for the blowback as we continue to do what appears to be an agenda throughout the country,” he said.

Cuts at the polls

Making it easier to reject ballots wasn’t the NCSBE’s first controversy. And it won’t be the last.

Next month, the board will meet to approve early voting hours and polling locations for all counties where local boards couldn’t approve their own plans in a unanimous vote. 

In some counties, board meetings have erupted into heated arguments, as voting advocates and community members fought to protect weekend voting hours and polling places that are easily accessible for minority voters and students. 

Millen warned her colleagues Thursday that they will need to create overflow space for their August meeting — she’s anticipating significant turnout.

Approving early voting plans may sound like a fairly innocuous administrative task. But this year the process has been mired in controversy after GOP operative Dallas Woodhouse, the state auditor’s liaison to local boards, was caught pressuring Republican election board members to enact partisan plans that often reduced voting hours and cut polling places in locations that were seen as more favorable for Democrats.

Woodhouse, who asked local boards to make similar cuts when he served as executive director of the state GOP in 2016, resigned from the State Auditor’s office this week — evidence his pressure campaign outraged local officials from both parties.

At Thursday’s meeting, Carmon blasted Woodhouse’s actions as a pattern of attempting to improperly influence local decisionmaking.

“Given the seriousness of these allegations and the public attention that they have generated, I believe we have an obligation to establish a complete and factual record,” Carmon said. He proposed that the board subpoena Woodhouse to answer questions under oath.

But Stacy “Four” Eggers IV, a Republican NCSBE member, was quick to dismiss Carmon’s concerns.

“If we start subpoenaing those who engage in First Amendment-protected political speech to come in and discuss things with us… there’s really going to be no end to that,” Eggers said. 

Public scrutiny

Partisan tensions are also running high on the local level. When Granville County’s election board met this week to finalize its early voting plans, community members showed up in force. 

They filled the room, hoisted signs and vocally opposed the GOP plan to close a polling place at a convenient location for Black voters. Even Democrats on the board seemed surprised by the high turnout at a meeting that rarely attracts public attention.

But this is no ordinary election year. 

Last month, Granville County board chair Larue Ulshafer, a Republican, pushed to cut one of the county’s four early voting sites and relocate two others. At that time, she deferentially referred to Boliek as “the boss.” 

But then, when Woodhouse’s influence campaign came to light, she abruptly resigned.

The board met Wednesday to reconsider the plan — this time, with just four members. 

Sharyn Alvarez, one of two Democrats on the board, argued that closing one of the voting site would create long lines elsewhere while also inconveniencing voters who would need to drive to a different location. Most of all, the closure was unnecessary, she said, because county leaders had just worked to secure funding to make sure the fourth polling place would remain open. 

Both Democrats on the board urged their GOP colleagues to keep the voting site open, particularly given the public turnout.

“We have never had a subject that brought out this much reaction,” Alvarez said. “We’ve got to take into consideration what has drawn the public to these meetings.”

Still, the two Republican board members voted to close the polling place. Now, without a unanimous vote, the state board will get the final word on Granville County’s early voting plan at its meeting next month. 

Teresa Gilreath, the second Democrat on the board, criticized local Republicans for supporting a plan that seemed to align with the partisanship emanating from the state capital.

“When you take a look at what’s happening in Raleigh, we don’t want any part of that mess. It is a hot mess,” Gilreath said. “We’re on a trajectory that we don’t need to be on.”