North Carolina’s elections shakeup extended to all 100 counties Tuesday as local boards flipped from Democratic to GOP control and State Auditor Dave Boliek appointed Republican chairs to lead them.
The changes expand GOP control of elections to the local level.
Last month, Boliek appointed a Republican majority state elections board under a new law that took appointment power away from Democratic Gov. Josh Stein.
Stein has sued over the law, but state appellate courts have allowed it to go into effect. Historically, the governor’s party has held majorities on the state and county boards.
Reporter Bryan Anderson was first to identify the partisan switch.
Local boards of election are the on-the-ground decision makers that pick polling locations, set early voting schedules and hours, and decide whether provisional ballots should be accepted.
Local board majorities appoint county elections directors with approval from the state Board of Elections executive director.
The new Republican state Board of Elections made quick use of its power to replace the state elections director with Republican Sam Hayes last month at its first meeting.
“I hope we’ll continue to have an election board that is focused on upholding the laws of the state of North Carolina and not involved in the partisan politics,” Sen. Ralph Hise (R-Mitchell), one of the Senate Elections Committee chairmen, said Tuesday afternoon.
Greg Flynn was a Democratic member of the Wake County board who was not reappointed Tuesday.
Flynn said in his years on the Wake board, most of its votes were unanimous and members “worked together pretty well.”
The change “I think will have a big effect on early voting site decisions,” he said.
In 2018, when local boards were split 2-2, Wake Republicans voted against opening an early voting site at NC State University, Raleigh’s News & Observer reported. In 2014, a dispute over a proposed early voting site at Appalachian State University in Boone reached the state Supreme Court, WRAL reported.
The state Board of Elections met Tuesday to approve a plan to collect missing identification numbers from voters who don’t have them attached to their names in the state’s electronic voter database.
About 98,000 of these voters, those who registered after 2004, won’t be able to have their ballots automatically count until they provide a partial Social Security number or driver’s license number. The Board is going to send information to these voters asking for the information next month.
Mail will go out later this summer to about 96,000 voters who don’t have that information attached to their files, but who showed ID when voting. They will vote regular ballots.
A third mailing will go out to voters who haven’t responded to previous notices.
The mailings will include pre-addressed, postage-paid envelopes.
Additionally, county elections officials will review the electronic files for data that is missing even though the voters supplied it.
The Trump Justice Department sued the Board of Elections last month claiming that the missing government numbers violate federal law.
Hayes told the Board the Justice Department has tentatively signed off on the plan and it could result in an agreement to resolve the lawsuit.
The DOJ lawsuit echoed claims that GOP Appeals Court Judge Jefferson Griffin, the failed candidate for a state Supreme Court seat, made as he tried to overturn his Democratic opponent’s November victory.
The Republican National Committee and the state Republican party made the same claim when it sought to purge 225,000 voters from the rolls.
As part of Griffin’s suit, the state Court of Appeals ordered the Board to gather the missing voter information.
The goal of the data collection is to comply with the Court of Appeals order and resolve the lawsuits, Hayes said.
“I intend to follow the law, both the letter and spirit,” Hayes said. “I believe that this will instill confidence in our elections, and I have said election security and voter access are just two sides of the same coin.”
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