North Carolina county officials drawing up their early voting plans for this fall’s midterm elections are contending with a new power player this year: the state auditor.
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In the lame-duck period after the 2024 election, Republican legislators voted to strip incoming Democratic Gov. Josh Stein of his authority over the State Board of Elections and give it to the incoming state auditor, Dave Boliek, who had flipped the office for Republicans that year.
Once an under-the-radar statewide position focused on monitoring state finances, the state auditor’s office is now taking an involved role in county-level election planning. Boliek and his staff are soliciting information and weighing in on counties’ early voting plans for the November general election, offering feedback and suggesting changes.
The auditor’s office requests, revealed in public meetings, interviews with county officials and public records requests made by advocacy groups and shared with NBC News, have alarmed voting rights advocates and Democrats, who argue Boliek is going beyond his office’s authorities in ways that could boost the GOP in the battleground state.
According to statute, Boliek is allowed to appoint members of the State Board of Elections, oversee its budget and appoint the chairs of county election boards. The State Board of Elections should otherwise operate independently, the new law says, handling matters such as early voting disputes that cannot be resolved by the counties.
Advocates and some State Elections Board members told NBC News they thought the influence from the auditor’s office was unusual, and none recalled statewide elected officials’ shaping early voting plans in the past.
“It is totally beyond what was envisioned and what was said on the floor of the Senate and the House when they were passing this law,” said Terence Everitt, the executive director of the North Carolina Voter Protection Alliance, a left-leaning group that advocates for voting rights.
Everitt, a Democrat, was a state representative when the bill was debated and passed two years ago.
Boliek defended his office’s moves in an interview, saying the criticisms were driven by partisanship.
“It is not unusual at all for appointees to boards and commissions if they have questions or need guidance” to reach out to the appointing office, Boliek said. “I think the complaint is the fact that the state auditor is a Republican. That’s the only complaint I hear.”
Early voting locations can affect turnout, particularly in competitive general elections.
“Study after study show that the closer someone lives to an early voting location, the more likely they are to cast a vote,” said Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University. “If they make these changes, it will have an impact.”
In Cabarrus County near Charlotte, Jay White, the county’s Elections Board chair, told the board that Boliek wanted it to add a polling site in the town of Midland, according to the board’s secretary, Martin Ericson. White did not respond to a request for comment.
The board delayed its vote, and the county’s elections director shared the request with county staff members, who began investigating options. Midland is a mostly white suburban town in the county with less than 5,000 residents.
The county Elections Board deadlocked over whether to include Sunday voting hours, which are an option for counties under North Carolina law. It will meet again Monday to consider locations and hours. If it can’t come to a unanimous agreement soon, the plan will be sent to the State Board of Elections for a final decision.
Randolph County Board of Elections Chair Aundrea Azelton said in response to a public records request from longtime voting rights activist Bob Hall that the auditor’s office had requested a polling site in Liberty, a rural area in the county with a new Toyota manufacturing plant.
Boliek said in an interview that his office wanted to ensure early voting options had geographic diversity to cut down on drive times for voters.
“If you’re only looking at population density, then what you get is clusters of early voting sites,” he said. “We are making access easier in a lot of these cases.”
In Jackson County, Republican Elections Board member Jay Pavey said the chair of the county GOP, Justin Castle, pressured him to vote against a new, larger early voting site on Western Carolina University’s campus that he felt was best for the community. Castle didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The auditor’s office, Pavey said he was told, didn’t want to put a polling site there and would try to oust him from the Elections Board if he voted for it. NC Newsline first reported Pavey’s comments.
Bill Thompson, the Jackson County board’s Republican chair, voted against the plan, including that site, because of “pressure” from state officials, according to Pavey. Thompson didn’t respond to a request for comment.
“I think it’s highly inappropriate for the auditor’s office to do this,” Pavey said in an interview with NBC News. “My vote was not for a political party, it was not against the party, it was for the residents of Jackson County.”
Boliek said that his staff had never spoken to Pavey and that he preferred using a different site.
“I do have an opinion in Jackson County, and I make that opinion very clear, and the opinion is that the recreation center there in Jackson County, which, by the way, is being paid for by the taxpayers of Jackson County, is more efficient and makes more common sense,” Boliek said.
After Pavey went public with the interaction this month, Stein, the Democratic governor, criticized Boliek on X.
“It’s outrageous that State Auditor Dave Boliek and the Auditor’s Office pressured local members of the Jackson County Board of Elections to reject an early voting location at Western Carolina University,” Stein wrote.
A person familiar with the State Board of Elections’ discussions said Democratic members asked to investigate Pavey’s allegations of pressure. State law says two members can subpoena witnesses, but the person said a lawyer told the Democratic members that an investigation must first be opened by the majority.
“There’s nothing in the statute that says the auditor cannot communicate with people that he appoints or she appoints,” Boliek said.
Conversations between the auditor’s office and Elections Board members are often led by the elections liaison for the auditor’s office, Dallas Woodhouse, a former state Republican Party chairman.
In early May, Columbus County Elections Board Chair Jillian McPherson-Edge proposed cutting all but one early voting location in the county. Later in the month, a public records request from the Southern Coalition for Social Justice showed Woodhouse detailing a plan with three sites.
“As of now mark Columbus tentatively down for 3 sites,” Woodhouse wrote in a group chat with an unidentified county official on May 27. “I agree 5 is overkill, but we can’t go below 3. Those are the largest towns and geographically diverse. It matches other key goals as well.”
In Granville County, Elections Board Chair Larue Ulshafer referred to Boliek as “the boss,” according to WUNC public radio, and conveyed the auditor’s input to elections staff members in an email obtained by Hall.
“Dallas advised the Mr. Boliek prefers to not close any locations, if possible,” Ulshafer said in an email to the county’s elections director.
That kind of involvement is unusual, said Karen Brinson Bell, the former executive director of the State Board of Elections.
Brinson Bell was removed after Republicans took control of the board and was replaced with Sam Hayes, the top lawyer for the state’s Republican House speaker.
“I was never contacted as a county director or a state director by anyone in the governor’s office or other state official to try to influence early voting plans,” she said. “I was a county director during [Republican] Gov. [Pat] McCrory’s administration, and we did not have interaction with Gov. McCrory’s office like we’re seeing out of the auditor’s office.”
Some advocates worry that Boliek is using his influence to seek partisan advantage.
“Democrats have their goals and philosophies, and the Republicans have their goals and philosophy, but state authority never — I’ve never seen a state official put their 2 cents into what a local board should be doing,” said Jeff Carmon, a Democratic member of the State Board of Elections.
Boliek said his vision has long been to make it “easy to vote, hard to cheat.”
“The vision is to have efficient, commonsense voting locations across North Carolina to give people as equal access as possible,” he said. “Anything that is complaining about where local boards put voting sites is purely political fever.”
