The Man Who Shut Down Early Voting at Western Carolina

 

Bill Thompson, presiding

 

 

Bill Thompson, the new Republican chair of the Jackson County Board of Elections, has managed to establish an early reputation as a nasty piece of work. But isn't that the way Phil Berger and Tim Moore intended election administration to go in North Carolina? They changed the law, put themselves in charge of elections, and just naturally attracted the meanest and most partisan people to make things as difficult as possible.

As chair of the Jackson BOE, it was Thompson who led the nasty move of killing an early voting site at Western Carolina University. “ By law, we could have just one site in Jackson County,” Thompson warned, ignoring evidence that the WCU early voting site was the most used in the county. “One site is required for every 30,000 voters. We've got four, that's plenty.”

Two complaints were lodged with the NC State BOE against Bill Thompson for his conduct in a Cullowee precinct polling place during the March primary. A voter, seconded by two other witnesses, and an actual poll worker both filed complaints on the second day of early voting, saying Thompson came into the polling site talking trash about Muslims and saying that both Germany and France were ruined now because of the Muslim invasion, and that he especially didn't trust Germans. The poll worker who heard all this was born in Germany and he summed up the grief  brief against Bill Thompson, that "he exposed deep and unfounded disgust against Muslims and their faith as well as any non-European culture.”

Bill Thompson's not the first bigot to chair a board of elections, but still....

The NC BOE on March 25th (last Wednesday) held an initial review to determine whether the complaints against Thompson "presented sufficient evidence of misconduct or a violation of election-related duties." The board voted 4-1 that the threshold had not been met. One Democrat voted with the Republican majority, though she lectured Thompson: "We're cautioned not to bring politics into the polling place, and discussions of politics. At least one of those instances cited in the complaints is arguably a political commentary, or brings in issues that really have no place in a polling place.” But she agreed to let him off the hook.

Republican SBOE member Stacy "Four" Eggers did give Thompson a highly decorous, because indirect dressing-down:

"Mr. Chairman, I think it is worth cautioning the chair [Thompson] as to his discussions, choice of words and what he chooses to discuss at the polling place. I know that Miss [Angela] Hawkins [another Jackson Co. board member] and I both have spent a lot of time in county precincts, and generally the discussion is limited to the weather, or perhaps your favorite sports team or something innocuous like that.

“Although the comments were not appropriate for the discussion in the area, they still, in my mind, don't show a violation of Chapter 163.” 

I suspect this may not be the last dressing-down that Bill Thompson will be needing.

 

Sue Their Sorry Asses!

 

The new Republican majority on the Jackson Co. Board of Elections voted 3-2 to eliminate an early-voting site on the campus of Western Carolina University that has been used for a decade. According to Chris Cooper, a political scientist at WCU, the university’s voting site has served "an outsize proportion of young and diverse voters compared to the rest of the county’s polling places."

Meanwhile, the new Republican majority on the Guilford Co. Board of Elections also voted 3-2 to reject a proposal to include early voting sites at UNC Greensboro and North Carolina A&T State University, which had been the case in 2024.

It's very clear why this is going on. The youth vote is a problem for Republicans, and they intend to make it as difficult as possible for that age group. The final decision on Jackson and Guilford will be made by the State Board of Elections, and we're pretty sure how that will go with its particular Republican majority. The only remedy will be for the injured parties in Jackson and Guilford to sue.

Watauga County faced the same thing in 2013, when the election of Pat McCrory changed the local Board of Elections to Republican control (under the guiding arm of Stacy "Four" Eggers), which promptly eliminated the polling site at the AppState Student Union. The local Watauga Voting Rights Taskforce sued in Wake Superior Court, and the judge concluded that the decision was arbitrary and capricious. He ordered a polling place on the AppState campus. Far as I know that order is still good, which perhaps explains why the current Watauga BOE hasn't attempted to eliminate campus voting this year.

If anyone's interested, we know a good Raleigh law firm that might help you guys.

Another NC County Says No to Christian Conservatism on Its School Board

 

"I refuse to adhere to the false teaching of separation of Church and State."

--Lisa R. Buchanan, candidate for the Jackson County school board, who was decisively defeated in a run-off election July 26, 2022 ... in a Facebook post

Lisa R. Buchanan (left) and Abigail Blakley Clayton (right)

Chris Cooper alerted me to the showdown run-off for Jackson County Board of Education, something I had heard nary a thing about.  (Cooper, Western Carolina University master political scientist, tweets and writes interesting stuff backed up with numbers.) Yesterday there was a rare run-off between an incumbent Jackson County school board member, who actually came in second in the four-way primary -- Abigail Blakley Clayton -- and her challenger, Lisa R. Buchanan, a (very) Christian conservative who actually wrote the quote above on her Facebook page and who came in 1st in the primary but with less than the 50% she needed to avoid a run-off. Clayton demanded a run-off and won it yesterday because the Democrats unified to defeat the crusader Buchanan, whose social media is a kind of flame dance.

There's a whole mental attitude there that leads down evolutionary channels to an ending I wouldn't want to encounter in the flesh in a dark alley.

The incumbent Clayton, a Democrat, woke voters up to a threat that's happening all over the political map, the conservative push to take over school boards, particularly in rural counties -- under the banner of ending altogether any focus on the history of American slavery and its effects in the modern world and no more coddling of cultural and gender non-conformance. A Lisa Buchanan appears on ballots in other NC rural counties. We took note of the "Right Wing Attempt To Take-Over the School Board" in Watauga, where a team of conservative candidates bent on censorship did not fare well in the primary. I haven't researched other counties. I should. 'Cause I've heard stories.

Anyway, yesterday in Jackson County, the Democrat Clayton was returned to office for four more years. Clayton took almost 60% of the vote (59.69%, 2,146 votes) to Republican Lisa Buchanan's 40% (1,449). Chris Cooper: "Easy to discount this one as small town (or at least small county) politics, but this one has an unusual # of interesting storylines." We expect Cooper will expand his analysis for Michael Blitzer's blog, Old North State Politics.

Isn't it obvious? Jackson County contains the campus of Western Carolina University. Watauga County contains AppState University. Without those populations of people seeking higher education, counties like Jackson and Watauga would maybe buy what the conservatives are selling.

Buncombe to Tighten Steep-Slope Regs

Following Jackson County's lead, no less.

Watauga, Jackson & Buncombe -- Oh My!

Asheville Citizen-Times reporter Joel Burgess takes an extended look this a.m. at why three lone North Carolina counties in the western mountains went for Obama, while all around them was red hot for McCain/Palin. Answer: young voters. All three counties contain a major state university.

Didn't your mother always warn you that a little larnin' was a dangerous thing?

Interesting factoids:

Of the Democratic-leaning counties, Watauga has the largest percentage of 18- to 25-year-old voters — 31.3 percent. Jackson is next with 15.4 percent, then Swain with 12.7 percent and Buncombe with 11.6 percent. Obama won all but Swain by differences as large as 57-43 percent.

We got us a new Generation Gap, folks!