North Carolina Democratic Party Chairwoman Anderson Clayton and N.C. House Democratic Leader Robert Reives said Wednesday the public needs to know who pressured the Republicans on the Jackson County Board of Elections to oppose a campus early voting site.
The pressure on Republican board members to vote against an early voting site at Western Carolina University this fall burst into public view this week.
Both GOP Board Chairman Bill Thompson and member Jay Pavey said at the Jackson board meeting Tuesday that Republicans in Raleigh told them to oppose it. Pavey said he was told he’d be removed from the county board if he didn’t vote the way the party wanted.
The unusual public disclosure of party coercion had Rep. Reives (D-Chatham) seeking more information, and asking whether Republicans in other counties faced similar pressure.
“It is troubling to hear that members of the Jackson County Board of Elections are receiving pressure and apparently threats of removal if they do not vote in lockstep with how Republicans in Raleigh tell them,” Reives said in a statement. “Taking these claims at face value, North Carolinians deserve to know who communicated these ‘orders’ and under what authority, and whether this is happening in other counties as well.”
A GOP county elections board member said he was warned against voting for a campus polling site
Despite the pressure, Pavey voted with the board’s two Democrats to approve the campus site. Thompson was the sole vote in opposition.
Wes Hanemayer, the board’s third Republican member, also supported the WCU site. He resigned last week.
Pavey said at the meeting that both he and Hanemayer had been called before the Republican Party Executive Committee to justify their support for the campus polling location.
On Tuesday, Democratic Jackson County Elections Board member Roy Osborn challenged Thompson to say he’d received a mandate from the state Auditor’s office to vote for an alternative to WCU.
“I will state that. Let’s get it out,” Thompson said. “Let’s get it out and on the record. I’m going to vote for the rec center.”
Senate Democratic Leader Sydney Batch condemned Boliek’s involvement in local elections, calling it a “ridiculous idea.”
“To have political pressure put on you when you’re supposed to be impartial is absolutely scandalous, scandalous,” Batch, a Wake Democrat, told reporters late Wednesday.
State elections chair: ‘Both Republicans and Democrats’ pressure elections board members
Republican state Board of Elections Chairman Francis De Luca told NC Newsline Wednesday he did not know the details of the Jackson County decision, but that “the parties on both sides put pressure on local members to do what they want. Both Republicans and Democrats.”
Boliek appointed De Luca to the elections board after Republicans in the legislature decided to strip the governor of his appointment powers. The state board switched from Democratic to Republican control.
De Luca told Newsline earlier this year that he generally doesn’t like campus voting sites because it’s too hard to find parking.
He said Wednesday that he was not expected to, nor was it implied, that he would vote against campus polling locations when Boliek appointed him.
“There was never any discussion of that,” De Luca said. “The only thing the Auditor said to me, he wanted me to try and bring accountability and make sure the law was applied evenly, and that’s what we’ve been doing.”
In a statement, N.C. Democratic Party Chairwoman Anderson Clayton said Democrats on elections boards are acting on voters’ behalf.
“We don’t have to threaten Democratic board members to keep polling locations open longer, allow for campus voting sites, and extended early voting, ” Clayton said. “That’s what the public is asking for at these meetings.”
“Meanwhile, Republicans like Dave Boliek are actively threatening their own members not to listen to the majority of those who are showing up at these meetings,” she added. “Now that Dave Boliek and Dallas Woodhouse have been caught, it’s time for them to be transparent about what other demands they’ve made to limit access to ballot boxes across the state.”
Woodhouse is a former Republican operative whom Boliek hired to work with county elections boards.
Republicans are more likely to oppose campus voting locations, while Democrats tend to support them.
Amid protests, NC elections board rejects campus voting sites and Sunday voting in several counties
The Republican majority on the state board rejected proposals for early voting sites on four campuses for the March primary. College Democrats of North Carolina and students who sued unsuccessfully to reverse that decision were represented by lawyers with the Elias Law Group, a Democratic law firm that specializes in voting and redistricting cases.
On Wednesday, Thompson told NC Newsline in an interview that his main objection to the WCU site is parking. The parking lot is confusing, he said, and older people may find it difficult to make it up an incline to the Health and Human Services Building.
“Ease of access is the main thing,” Thompson said. “I’ve got a half-dozen friends with replacement parts.”
Thompson said he also heard concerns that the county would be using WCU’s Health and Human Sciences Building for the first time, a location that voters weren’t used to.
Before this year’s primary, WCU had had a polling place at its university center since 2016 that had been used in five general elections and four primaries.
Thompson also believes the campus site favors Democrats. “You don’t have to think too hard,” he said. “Look at the voter registration on campus.”
Though he did not bring up threats at Tuesday’s meeting, Thompson said Wednesday he knows he, too, can be removed if he crosses the GOP.
“It’s just part of the party,” he said. “And I’m the Republican chair, so I’ve got to listen to what the party says a little bit. I serve at their pleasure a little bit. They can do away with me. It is a part of it. It’s like the Democrats – they listen to their party. That’s just politics.”
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