North Carolina Republicans Want To Limit Early Voting 

Republican election officials in North Carolina are facing scrutiny for attempts to end early voting on Sundays and remove early voting sites from college campuses. 

The New York Times reports that many of the changes in how North Carolina conducts early voting come directly from Republican state auditor Dave Boliek. Boliek took the position last year after receiving an endorsement from President Donald Trump. One of Boliek’s first moves was hiring Dallas Woodhouse, the former executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party, to serve as his mediator with county election boards. 

Boliek and Woodhouse wasted no time pressuring counties to end early voting on Sundays and to move early voting sites out of Black communities. 

“Drop Sunday,” Woodhouse wrote in a text to Larry Beatty, the Republican chairman of the Pasquotank Board of Elections. Boliek also convinced Larue Ulshafer, chair of the Granville County election board, to move an early voting site from Creedmoor, a predominantly Black area that went for former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, to Oxford, a more white, rural Republican area.

Ulshafer defended the move as a result of hearing Boliek describe a “vision” of “free and equal voting across the county, north, south, and central.” Of course, in this context, “equal” means “more favorable to white Republicans.”

Jay Pavey, a Republican member of the Jackson County Board of Elections, was touring the Health and Human Sciences Building off Western Carolina University’s main campus as a potential early voting site when he received some unusual directions. “Apparently, unbeknownst to me, the auditor’s office out of Raleigh is extremely opposed to having any voting site on any university campus,” Pavey said in an interview.

“If we did not vote the way they wanted us to, then they were going to ensure that we got removed from the board at some point,” Pavey added. “So, of course, you know that doesn’t work with me.”

So, Boliek is really moving like a mafia boss to disenfranchise Democrats and Black voters. Right down to having Woodhouse basically act like his consigliere. That is genuinely crazy work. 

Boliek told the Times that Pavey’s allegation is “not true” and “rumor and innuendo,” but when you look at how dude’s been moving, it’s not hard to believe there’s some truth to Pavey’s comment. 

Unsurprisingly, Boliek and Woodhouse’s efforts have received pushback from Democrats in the state. North Carolina’s Democratic Gov. Jared Stein said he is “concerned about the politicization of election administration in North Carolina.”

“It’s clear that the auditor’s staff person, who was the former executive director of the Republican Party, has been interfering with and directing local county boards of elections on how to shape their early voting plans, and that’s just wrong,” Stein said. “I am not comforted by the partisan turn of the State Board of Elections, but that’s exactly what the Republican legislature had in mind for it when they took authority away from me and gave it to the auditor – the only auditor in the country, by the way, who oversees elections.”

Irene Grimes, one of the Democratic members of the Cumberland County board, also spoke out about the blatantly partisan influence in how North Carolina elections are being conducted.

“There is unprecedented influence and unprecedented, I think, misconduct going on,” Grimes said in an interview. “We need to make early voting as available as humanly possible. That’s kind of my overall thing. Some of my fellow board members disagree, to put it mildly, and to me it doesn’t matter whether an early voting site is in a red, green, purple, or, I don’t know, alien area.”

North Carolina is already engaged in a redistricting effort to design a congressional map more favorable to Republicans. Now they’re just trying to disenfranchise anyone who doesn’t want to vote for them. I have no idea how any of this is legal. What’s truly wild to me is that Republicans are doing all this to maintain power that they’re not doing anything with. 

SEE ALSO:

Lessons From North Carolina: A Canary In The Democracy Coal Mine

North Carolina Tried To Make Black, Brown, And Low-Income Voters Invisible Before The Primary. Here’s How We Fought Back

North Carolina Republicans Want To Limit Early Voting was originally published on newsone.com