Guilford Co BOE Nixes Campus Early Voting at A&T and UNC-Greensboro

 

Four Eggers, Member, SBOE

 

Joining the Republican rush to discourage college-student voting in North Carolina, the Guilford County Board of Elections, with its Republican majority (plus one Democrat arrrrg!), passed its early voting plan, which took away General Election early voting sites previously available at North Carolina A&T and at UNC-Greensboro. The meeting was packed with students who remained quiet and respectful (for the most part) through a dirty deed that took less than 30 minutes. One person did yell out during the discussion about campus voting, “You don’t care about these people!” And was escorted out.

The vote of the board was 4-1, meaning one Democrat broke with her fellow party appointee and voted with the Republicans. Because the vote was not unanimous -- a tic in North Carolina election law -- it must now go for final resolution to the State Board of Elections (SBOE), where men like Four Eggers and Francis DeLuca and Bob Rucho will fer shore nix the campuses. The boss of these SBOE bosses, State Auditor Dave Boliek, is already well known as the vote suppressor supreme. It's a perfect circle of life, if life is like an anaconda. The NCGOP now owns access to the polls, an ambition they've had for decades.

The Democrat who voted yesterday with the Republicans is Felita Regina Donnell, a retired revenue agent for the IRS, a graduate of A&T, executive board member of the Greensboro NAACP, past president of the African American Caucus of the North Carolina Democratic Party, past president of Guilford County Democratic Women, and a former member of the North Carolina Democratic Party's Council of Review. I would call her a big deal in the Party. Who just left a gaping wound in the side of Democracy.

 

Watauga's Own "Four" Eggers Shuts Down Investigation into Dallas Woodhouse's Voter Suppression Activities

 

Photo Jesse Barber

 

Last Thursday, with Stacy C. Eggers IV ("Four") presiding over the State Board of Elections (SBOE), Jeff Carmon, one of two Democratic members, spoke about the allegations that preceded Dallas Woodhouse's resignation as Auditor Dave Boliek's enforcer ("liaison") to all county boards, going over and around the actual staff at the SBOE. It had become well established that Woodhouse was behind orders in some specific counties advising the closing of early voting at college campuses and an end to Sunday voting in Black communities.

“Given the seriousness of these allegations and the public attention that they have generated, I believe we have an obligation to establish a complete and factual record,” Carmon said. “At this stage, I believe the board has little choice but to subpoena Mr. Woodhouse so that he may answer questions under oath.”

Eggers was horrified and shut that shit down quickly, refused to allow a vote on a subpoena for Woodhouse, arguing hilariously that it would be inappropriate to go after Woodhouse now because he's resigned his job and is a private citizen. What? When Carmon pointed out that Woodhouse's official actions were the point, not his private behavior, Eggers retreated to a threat, warning Carmon that he'd better "drop it," before the Republican majority called for investigating people who ran the SBOE for Roy Cooper and Josh Stein. (Will Doran, WRAL)

This is the same Four Eggers who secretly directed efforts to suppress the college vote in Watauga in 2013 after his younger brother was installed as the chair of the Watauga BOE. Bertrand Gutierrez scooped that scandal for the Winston-Salem Journal, and I used up a lot of bandwidth writing about Mr. Eggers and his attempt to change the entire landscape of voting in Watauga County. The first meeting of the Watauga BOE after the Republicans took over, August 12, 2013, a huge crowd had been alerted that something bad was about to go down. The meeting room was standing room only, so they moved to the main courtroom. The Republican majority proceeded to pass a dozen or more "resolutions" (changes in policy) that were proven later by digital thumbprint to have been ghost-written by the chair's big brother Four. One of those resolutions closed early voting at AppState. That meeting, with that crowd, became a raucous circus of protest, with cat-calling and boos. The lone Democratic member of the Watauga BOE said damn twice, and it was captured on video. The Civitas people alleged that the Democratic member "cursed through the whole meeting." An exaggeration that nevertheless summarizes adequately the vibe of that day.

That decision to close AppState early voting, on appeal, was upheld by the SBOE, also Republican majority at that time. A non-profit, the Watauga County Voting Rights Taskforce, and individual plaintiffs, sued in Wake Superior Court to restore the student union site. On October 13, 2014, literally on the eve of the start of early voting for the fall elections of 2014, the senior resident judge Donald Stephens issued a sharply worded decision declaring the Watauga BOE's shutdown at AppState "arbitrary and capricious." The next morning, and just as quickly as the judge had ruled, the staff of the Watauga BOE was set up in the student union and ready for early voting. We were first in line. And we've had early voting on the AppState campus ever since because a judge ordered it. (Q. Does a judge's order have a limited lifespan? How is that determined?)

Couldn't do it in Watauga in 2014. But willing to let Dallas Woodhouse do it in 2026. Same "Four" Eggers.

 

You Think That Rearranging Furniture at the SBOE Absolves It of Corruption? Dallas Woodhouse Still Works There!

 

NC Voices

 

The cover story Dave Boliek put out in September 2025 about hiring Dallas Woodhouse as some sort of State Board of Elections (SBOE) "liaison," whose role, we would soon discover -- to absolutely no one's surprise -- was actually to lord it over county boards of elections and inhibit college-age and Black voters wherever possible. At the time of Woodhouse's hiring, Boliek announced him to county election officials: "[I hired] him to assist in your efforts to ensure election integrity while encouraging maximum participation in our elections." Hahahahaha

The best reporting I've seen on the Woodhouse "reassignment" at the SBOE, the piece below, is thorough and complete. I don't know who wrote it, but thank you!

And if you're a partisan like me and tempted to celebrate the mere rearrangement of furniture at the SBOE -- window-dressing for a corrupt and exposed operation -- I would advise you not to. Dallas Woodhouse is still there at the SBOE, along with his embedded philosophy of might-makes-right, and trailing all that heavy baggage of cut-throat politics. You think the people who hired Woodhouse and who now obviously depend on him to be there have changed their spots? This isn't a victory, but it exposed their corruption. 

RALEIGH -- By WRAL News  A North Carolina Republican operative who was hired by the state auditor to help shape the state’s election boards and early voting plans has been reassigned, and his election liaison position has been discontinued. 

State and county elections officials are beginning to ramp up preparations for the 2026 midterm elections. Mail-in ballots will go out in September, early voting starts in October and election day is Nov. 3.

State Auditor Dave Boliek reassigned Dallas Woodhouse, a former executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party, NBC News reported Wednesday morning. Woodhouse had served in the role since September.

“Now that we are more than a year past appointments, and board chairs have settled into their roles having worked through a municipal election, primary election, and most of the local boards have passed early voting plans for the general election, the Auditor's Office has discontinued the elections liaison role,” a spokesman for the auditor’s office told WRAL in a statement Wednesday. “The elections liaison was established because the Auditor's Office gained new responsibilities. The position was not meant to be permanent.”

Woodhouse will work on strategic initiatives that relate to constituent services and communications, according to the spokesman.

Republican state lawmakers stripped responsibility for overseeing state and county election boards away from Democratic Gov. Josh Stein in 2024 and gave the power to Boliek, a Republican. Under Boliek and Woodhouse, the state board of elections and all 100 county election boards have switched to GOP majorities, and some have begun enacting longtime Republican priorities such as eliminating early voting options on Sundays — a popular day with Black voters and on college campuses. Black voters and students tend to vote Democratic.

According to reporting from WLOS and NC Local, Woodhouse and Boliek were involved in efforts to ensure the new Jackson County Board of Elections would shut down a polling place on campus at Western Carolina University. In the Triangle, the Wake County Board of Elections also recently voted to eliminate a longtime early voting site at N.C. State’s student union, and to move it to a remote part of campus, WRAL previously reported.

Woodhouse was reassigned on June 2, NBC News reported. Woodhouse earns $110,000, according to a database of state employee salaries.

In September, Boliek wrote to some county election officials that “to assist in your efforts to ensure election integrity while encouraging maximum participation in our elections, I have appointed Dallas Woodhouse as my liaison.”

Woodhouse referred a request for comment Wednesday to the auditor’s office.

 

Dallas Woodhouse Causes Embarrassment, But what Dallas Woodhouse Stood For Still Very Much the Philosophy at the State Board of Elections

Big news this afternoon: Dallas Woodhouse, who has a history of trying to knee-cap college students' voting and Sunday voting for African-Americans, has been "reassigned" in the State Board of Elections. Instead of his $110,000 per annum job of "advising" local county boards of elections -- principally, advising the Republican majorities to eliminate campus polling places where possible and stop Sunday voting in communities with large Black congregations, Woodhouse has been reassigned to a desk in another part of the SBOE.

But it's all window-dressing, and it means nothing. The attitude toward suppressing certain voters still reigns in Auditor's Dave Boliek's MAGA brain. Woodhouse had caused Mr. Boliek some very bad optics after he was revealed telling the chair of the Jackson County Board of Elections, "Don't let them have a vote," them being students at Western Carolina University who had become accumstomed to a student union early voting site. There's also evidence that he told the Pasquotank County Bd of Elections chair to eliminate Sunday voting.  Pasquotank County is 35% Black.

The leopards can white-wash their spots, but they're still going to be blood predators.

 

W T [EVERLASTING ] F

 

The Wake County Board of Elections just voted unanimously to approve an early voting plan for November that cuts out the Talley Student Union on the North Carolina State University campus, where some 47,000 students, faculty, and staff go every day. The final vote was 5-0, with both Democratic reps voting with the Republicans. This final decision followed what appeared to be a gallant Democratic attempt to save Talley as an early voting site. The two Democrats made a motion to keep Talley in the early voting plan, which pleased the overflow crowd who attended yesterday to watch the action, many of them NCSU affiliated. The Democratic motion was defeated along partisan lines 3-2. Naturally.

The next step would have depended on the Democrats sticking to their high-minded guns. They should have voted against the final version -- the Dallas Woodhouse-branded solution for discouraging the youth vote by whatever means. (In Jackson County, where Republican members of the local BOE were highminded enough to recommend a campus early voting site for Western Carolina, they got threatened by higher ups. One of the Republicans resigned in protest.) Voting against the Republican majority on the board forces by law a punt to the State Board of Elections, where, yes, another negative outcome is assured. The three Republican majority on the SBOE are in on the fix. But Democrats who don't keep fighting, even in the face of insurmountable odds -- it's not a good look.

I would like this not to be the Democratic brand in North Carolina: Caving, like DeeCee Dems. Make motions and argue to keep a voting site for young people, like you truly believe in what you're saying, like a hero for the people, and then turn around and vote with the opposition so that there cannot be a test of the decision at the State Board of Elections.

I would love to hear the reasoning behind that final unanimous vote.

No, never mind. In fact, just STFU.

 

Jackson Co. Board of Elections Member Blows the Whistle on Republican Collusion To Squelch the Youth Vote

 

Dave Boliek

 

 

We've known since the bosses in the General Assembly put Republican Auditor Dave Boliek in charge of the State Board of Elections that the GOP had drawn a cross-hatch on the youth vote. That became crystal clear when Boliek appointed Republican operative Dallas Woodhouse to "coordinate" voting plans with county parties. What Woodhouse apparently did was issue "kill" orders for university early voting sites in several county BOEs, one of which was Jackson County, home to Western Carolina University. WCU had enjoyed an early voting site on its campus since 2016. 

We don't know how Woodhouse may have delivered the message about squelching the youth vote, but the Republican majority in Jackson Co. got the message for the primary. The board voted 3-2 along partisan lines to deny WCU its usual site, and because the vote was not unanimous -- as required by state law -- the primary early voting plan had to go to the State Board of Elections with its 3-2 Republican majority. The Republicans on the SBOE naturally found it quite easy to sanction the closing of the site at WCU.

That was the primary. Now early voting plans for the General Elections are once again issues for county BOEs. Two of the three Republican members in Jackson let it be known that they supported returning early voting to the WCU campus for this fall. Those two members were promptly summoned to a secret dressing-down by the Jackson County Republican Executive Committee, which according to the member who blew the whistle, threatened the two men with expulsion from the board:

“When we made it clear what we were going to vote, we were asked to come before the Executive Committee of the Republican Party” to justify it, the whistleblower told an open meeting of the Jackson BOE Monday. “And we presented them evidence, we presented them numbers, we presented them everything,” the whistle-blower said. “And all I heard was, ‘Well, we just don’t want it on campus. We just don’t want it on campus.’ ”

One of those two renegade Republican members promptly resigned from the board in April, leaving a 2-2 split of voting members. Only one remaining Republican, the Chair of the Board, voted against the WCU site for the Fall elections. The whistle-blower and the two Democrats voted for the WCU site. The board chair was apologetic and somewhat chagrined. According to reporting by NCNewsline, he admitted during Monday's meeting that he had been pressured "from above" and that he was sorry to be the one vote that kept the plan from being unanimous. The final decision will now fall again to the SBOE, and we've seen this movie before. 

What they're doing to suppress the youth vote in the upcoming election is as plain as the large partisan nose on Dave Boliek's fat face.

NCGOP -- Whittling Away While They Can

 

The inevitable news this morning (we've been waiting for this move), and there's probably more voter suppression to come. It's their brand.

 

RALEIGH, N.C. May 27, 2026 -- Republican lawmakers in North Carolina are pushing proposals that would shorten the state’s early, in-person voting period and eliminate a Sunday voting day statewide. 

Two bills moving through the General Assembly, Senate Bill 1084 and House Bill 66, would reduce the number of early voting days before elections.

The Senate proposal would cut early in-person voting from 17 days to 10 in all 100 counties and eliminate one Sunday of voting statewide. The House version would shorten the period from 17 days to 13, also removing a Sunday voting day.

Early voting is the most popular method of casting a ballot. Most North Carolinians vote early rather than on Election Day.... [WRAL]

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.

 

Students Sue for Restoration of Campus Polling Sites

 

Democracy Docket:

A group of North Carolina students sued Republican state officials Tuesday to restore early voting sites on three college campuses across the state, including at the United States’ largest historically Black college.

The lawsuit comes just over two weeks after the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) rejected the early voting sites in a 3-2 vote along party lines....

In the lawsuit [brought by the Elias Law Group] the students allege that the board’s removal of voting sites at Western Carolina University (WCU), the University of North Carolina–Greensboro (UNC-G), and North Carolina A&T State University (NC A&T), the largest HBCU in the country, violated the U.S. Constitution in multiple ways.

They argue that the removal unduly burdens the right to vote in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments by forcing students, who often do not have reliable transportation, to travel long distances off campus in order to cast their ballot....

The elimination of on-campus sites violates the 26th Amendment by targeting student voters, particularly young Black voters, the lawsuit argues.

Taken together, the three campuses serve over 40,000 students, including thousands of Black students. NC A&T has a current enrollment of over 15,000 students.

“For many of these students, voting in college is their first opportunity to exercise the franchise — a milestone in their civic engagement and a connection to the generations of Black North Carolinians who fought for the right to vote,” the lawsuit reads.

The students, who also sued the Jackson County Board of Elections and many of its members, are seeking a court order to block the elimination of the on-campus early voting sites for the upcoming 2026 primary.

Since Republicans took control of the NCSBE in May, it has taken several steps to restrict voting in the state.

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.

Political Notes -- "Fuck It" Edition

 

Kate Barr, the "Can't Win but Fuck It!" political influencer who has made a second career out of encouraging Democratic candidates to file in districts they can't possibly win -- as an act of revolutionary defiance against Republican gerrymandering -- has announced a new tactic: Can't win as a Democrat? File as a Republican and run a primary against the pasty-assed Tim Moore in Congressional District 14, a safe seat he mapped for himself when he was running the House. It was specifically and quite publicly drawn for him, a lucrative landing pad after Speaker of the NCHouse (which was also a notoriously lucrative perch for Moore -- and don't make me go look up all the investigative pieces exposing his corruption).

Barr told the WashPost, “My message is really about fairness. And it’s consistent with when I ran for state senate district 37 in ‘24,” she said. “We need fair maps. We deserve fair elections. We, as voters, should be able to hold our elected leaders accountable. And it is wrong that we can’t.”

Dave Boliek, the rubberstamp
for suppression of the vote in NC

On Friday, reporter Bryan Anderson broke the news that Paul Cox, General Counsel to the State Board of Elections, resigned his job, citing the highly partisan nature of the new board under Republican control. Guys as extreme as Francis X. DeLuca, former president of the Civitas Institute, and Robert Rucho, former Republican state senator with too many axes to grind, and their new boss, State Auditor Dave Boliek, a former reactionary Democrat with much to prove to his new Republican masters, not to mention the ineffable Dallas Woodhouse, appointed by Boliek to "oversee" county boards of elections -- all of that became too much for a lawyer with professional integrity which was itself based on an understanding that the administration of elections cannot become a partisan battleground, which would violate the statutory mandate of the Board of Elections. Ever since the Berger/Moore General Assembly took the Board of Elections away from Gov. Stein and gave it to the newly minted MAGA Republican Dave Boliek, we've always known what was afoot and what was indubitably ahead of us, ahead of anyone who wants to insure the voting rights and ballot access of all citizens. Paul Cox set a flare over the ice berg's drift.

In January of 2024, an Avery County man named William J. Barthel attended a special meeting of the Avery County Commish, stood at the back of the room so he wouldn't obstruct anybody's sightline, and unfurled a banner which made crude comments about the Commish's clerk, Cindy Turbyfill. The sheriff's department immediately descended on Barthel, told him to take the banner down; he refused; the commish chair told him he had to leave. At which point Barthel, who had been totally silent up to that point, asked "Why do I have to leave?" I'm exercising my constitutional rights. He was uncooperative which led to his handcuffing outside the courtroom. He was charged with disrupting an official meeting and with resisting arrest. After being convicted in Avery District Court, he appealed to the Superior Court and got a two-day trial with a jury before Judge Gavenus. Again, he was convicted, sentenced to 30 days, suspended for 18 months of supervised probation. 

Cohen v. California (1971)
ruled that this banner was free speech

A panel of the NC Court of Appeals just reversed all of that: "[Barthel] argues that the First Amendment protects his silent display of a crude banner criticizing [Cindy Turbyfill] at a board meeting. We agree. The First Amendment shielded his right to stand silently at the back of the boardroom with his vulgar banner during the public comment period. Because his arrest was unlawful, Defendant had the right to resist it without using excessive force. He used reasonable force. We therefore vacate both convictions." Republican Judge Donna Stroud wrote the opinion. Chief Judge Chris Dillon and Judge Fred Gore, two other Republicans, concurred.

I'm deliberately not reprinting here what Barthel's banner said (let alone his highly-offensive-to-many T-shirt), but if you click the link in the previous paragraph, you can read it for yourself in the Appeals Court order. I laughed out loud. And then I had to start googling. The court identified Turbyfill as a commissioner. She's not. She's clerk to the board and also assistant county manager. There's obviously a juicy story behind Barthel's grudge against her. Maybe someone in Avery who reads here will enlighten us.

Watauga County Voting Rights Taskforce (et al.) Challenges Sen. Hise's Unconstitutional Gerrymander of Watauga

 

Brandon Kingdollar, reporting for NC Newsline:

Sen. Ralph Hise

A federal lawsuit brought by voters Wednesday [Oct. 1, 2025] accuses the North Carolina legislature of forcing unconstitutional voting maps on Watauga County to help more Republican candidates win local elections.

The challenge, filed in the Western District of North Carolina by seven Watauga County voters and joined by voting rights advocacy groups, argues that Senate Bill 759, passed in 2023, imposes “unconstitutional, malapportioned electoral districts with large population deviations,” violating the legal principle of one person, one vote.

“The Plan dilutes the votes of Democratic voters by systematically overpopulating the districts in which Democrats have the opportunity to elect their candidates of choice and systematically underpopulating the districts in which Republicans have the opportunity to elect their candidates of choice,” the complaint states.

Watauga Board of Elections Director Matthew Snyder declined to comment on pending litigation. A spokesperson for Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger (R-Rockingham) did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The lawsuit names the Watauga County Board of Elections and its members as defendants. Advocacy organizations Common Cause North Carolina and the Watauga County Voting Rights Task Force are also plaintiffs in the suit.

Under the previous election system, county commissioners were elected to five residential districts — meaning candidates must live in the district they represent, but the county’s residents vote in all five elections — yielding three Democratic commissioners and two Republicans.

After the new map, made up of electoral districts — where only residents of the district vote on that district’s commissioner — the board is made up of five Republicans. Two districts encompassing most of Boone will not elect commissioners until 2026 under S.B. 759, leaving the majority of the town’s residents with no representation, according to the lawsuit.

Following the election, the three Republicans elected to the commission appointed two Republicans to the remaining vacancies, seats held by Republicans that were vacated to run in the new election.

While the initial law applied the districts only to the Watauga Board of Commissioners, a subsequent bill passed in 2024, Senate Bill 912, extended them to the Watauga Board of Education. The lawsuit also challenges that piece of legislation.

The U.S. Supreme Court decided in a 2019 ruling on North Carolina maps that “partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts.” The North Carolina Supreme Court also views such claims as “nonjusticiable under the North Carolina Constitution,” upholding Republican-leaning maps in 2023.

The Watauga complaint centers its legal claims on nonpartisan classes of voters instead, including location and perceived duration of residence. The complaint alleges that Sen. Ralph Hise (R-Mitchell) sought to dilute the votes of urban students to boost the voting power of rural residents of the county. 

Hise, a Republican whose district includes Watauga, was the lone sponsor of both bills. He said on the state Senate floor in 2023 that he was motivated to counteract “the predominance of [Appalachian State University] and others in the electoral process.” The complaint quotes him pointing to “a longtime standing conflict between the influence of the university and others within the county.”

These remarks, the plaintiffs argue, are an admission of two unconstitutional criteria for the maps: geographic favoritism and discrimination against perceived temporary residents.

Hise did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

[The Fate of Last Year's Local Referendum]

When the Watauga Board of Commissioners voted to hold a local referendum proposing new maps without those discrepancies, the General Assembly added to S.B. 912 a provision barring any referendum enacted by Watauga County voters impacting the county commission from taking effect until after the 2032 elections.

Despite the referendum’s passage by a 71% to 29% margin in 2024, it will not take effect for nearly a decade. This violates the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection, the complaint alleges.

“The voters of Watauga County will be stuck with unconstitutional districts for their County Commission and Board of Education, unless this Court intervenes,” the lawsuit states. “Fundamentally, the people of Watauga County have no choice but to petition this Court for urgently needed relief from Defendants’ ongoing violations of their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.”

The individual plaintiffs include six Democratic voters and one unaffiliated voter. Three are former members of the Watauga County Board of Commissioners, including Larry Turnbow and Charlie Wallin, who served as chair and vice-chair prior to the 2024 election.

“Watauga County residents voted to adopt fair districts while rejecting the gerrymandered maps imposed on us by the legislature,” said Ray Russell, the other former commissioner joining the lawsuit. “We’re filing this lawsuit to protect our mountain community against the unconstitutional overreach by politicians in Raleigh.”

Dallas Woodhouse Now in Charge of Election Integrity in North Carolina

 

Woodhouse

News came last week that the state Auditor Dave Boliek, the newly established Republican overlord of voting in North Carolina, appointed Dallas Woodhouse to a special role enforcing "election integrity" (the code word) via "election policy and proper oversight." What exactly that "oversight" means, especially considering Woodhouse's history and the clear undertow of Republican ambitions to limit voting ahead of the midterms rather than encouraging it, has many progressives and independents alike very concerned.

Who the Hell Is Dallas Woodhouse?

Woodhouse is famous as a hard-charging Republican operative with a history of chair-flinging partisanship. Ahead of the 2014 senatorial contest between Thom Tillis and Kay Hagan, Woodhouse created a 501(c)(4), Carolina Rising, ostensibly under IRS rules as a tax exempt "social welfare" org, but most of the $4.9 million he raised went to a single political media firm in Virginia for ads mentioning Thom Tillis favorably. Carolina Rising listed a single anonymous donor for all that money. The donor later turned out to be Karl Rove's super-PAC, Crossroads GPS. Complaints were filed with the IRS that Carolina Rising was clearly a partisan operation. I don't know if anything substantive came of those complaints. Probably not. (On the night of Tillis's election in 2014, Woodhouse appeared before cameras famously and slurringly quite inebriated, bragging that he had spent well over $4 million to get Tillis elected. That video may still be on YouTube.)

In October of 2015 Woodhouse was hired as executive director of the NCGOP. In that role, in August of 2016 Woodhouse famously sent an email to all Republican members of county boards of election reminding them that with Pat McCrory as governor, they had the power to manipulate early voting plans for "Party-line" outcomes. Both McCrory and Donald Trump would be on the ballot that fall, and Woodhouse was doing his due diligence to manufacture wins for those guys by helping to suppress Democratic votes where possible, particularly Sunday voting favored by many Black churches, and student voting, facilitated by polling places on college campuses. McCrory lost but Trump won that year, so partial success for Woodhouse's team.

After Woodhouse stepped down from executive director of the NCGOP in 2019 -- damaged flotsam from the bribery scandal involving party Chair Robin Hayes (Woodhouse was never implicated) -- he joined both the John Locke Foundation and the Civitas Institute as a paid consultant/staffer. Those two influential North Carolina purveyors of big-money conservative orthodoxy kept Woodhouse in the inner-circle of the Republican establishment. The old Tea Party types, best represented by the opinion stylings of Brant Clifton at the Daily Haymaker, don't like him, don't trust him, especially after Woodhouse managed to oust Hasan Harnett from the GOP chairmanship less than a year into his term).

(Use the search engine, top left, for many more instances and details recorded on this blog during the last decade for assuming that Woodhouse's appointment as overseer/enforcer of voting rights statewide will mean an open field day for suppressing the Democratic vote everywhere possible, all the time, forever.)

How Do the Republican Members of the State's BOE Feel About Woodhouse's Appointment?

Dunno. But I can speculate. 

There are three Republican members of the SBOE, all appointed by the aforementioned Dave Boliek in his new role as Elections Czar: 

Stacy "Four" Eggers IV from Watauga; 

Ex-Senator and Yankee transplant Robert Rucho, who can justifiably wear the label of "wacky right-wing hothead." DeLuca had a huge hand in fashioning the "Monster Voting Law" in 2013, which was soon defeated in court for suppressing the vote of Black citizens; 

Francis X. DeLuca, a one-time congressional candidate and former boss of Art Pope's right-wing Civitas Institute -- the org which, according to NCNewsline, "has long and passionately championed dozens of extreme (and sometimes downright strange) causes," including suppressing access to voting in the interests of "election intrigrity."

I've been listening to SBOE meetings via Webex. Most recently I heard Chair DeLuca suggest that Federal elections law (the HAVA Act) is probably "insane." He had just been told, in fact reassured by SBOE legal counsel, that the procedures by which the SBOE is repairing the missing data from several thousand voter registrations is entirely by the book and according to the law). Robert Rucho had complained that the law wasn't strict enough and implied that all sorts of fraud is going on all the time.

How does Four Eggers feel about the appointment of Dallas Woodhouse, and how is Eggers parsing who gets to demand what? Boliek's memo appointing Woodhouse implied but didn't spell out that Woodhouse has some sort of fiat over not only the county boards but the SBOE itself. Is Eggers going to bend the knee to an "election intrigrity compliance dictator" who's been put in above him and the SBOE? What are the legal ramifications when Woodhouse goes mucking about with 2024 early voting plans that include polling sites on college campuses?

 

Update on the Attempt To Suppress Voting in NC

 

The North Carolina State Board of Elections (SBOE) announced last month that it would be sending mailers to roughly 194,000 N.C. residents, directing them to update their voter registration information -- ultimate fall-out from the never-ending NC Supreme Court election involving one Jefferson Griffin and his accusations of illegitimacy against voters who were missing that information, and then the inevitable piling on of Trump's strong-arm enforcer (a.k.a. Dept. of Justice), which sued the SBOE.

Starting in 2013, NC’s voter registration form unintentionally appeared to make filling out a driver’s license number or Social Security number optional. Many registered in good faith using those faulty forms. In 2023, the SBOE fixed its form. But Pam Bondi demands that all incomplete registrants must be updated with missing info. Hence, an explanatory demand mailer going out now from the SBOE to a first batch of 103,270 North Carolina voters.

Bryan Anderson with the help of WCU prof Chris Cooper sussed out some statistics. While the average age of a North Carolina voter is 51.4 years, the average age of the voters with incomplete registrations is 38.9 years. (Anderson reminds us that it makes sense that people who registered with faulty forms during that 10-year span -- 2013-2023 -- are likely to be younger than the average voter.)

Of the first batch of 103,270 voters who need to cure their registrations, 63% are Unaffiliated, 23% are Democrat, 14% are Republican.

The "Don't Say Vote" Bill in the General Assembly

 

[Democracy Docket] North Carolina Republicans have introduced a sweeping elections bill [H 958) that, among other steps, would bar election officials from encouraging or promoting voter turnout....

The proposed ban “raises real questions about what democracy means in North Carolina, who really holds the power, who government is answering to,” Andrew Garber, a counsel in the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program, told Democracy Docket.

Rep. Allison Dahle, the top Democrat on North Carolina’s House Elections committee, was blunter.

“I get the feeling that people don’t want democracy,” Dahle told Democracy Docket.

Snotnose Republican Freshman in NC House Intends To Limit Early Voting

 

Snotnose

Last Wednesday, Feb. 5th, Republican state Rep. Wyatt Gable filed a bill in Raleigh to drastically cut the early voting period in North Carolina from three weeks down to a mere six days, with a prohibition against any Sunday voting (because it's favored by Black voters, we assume).

Gable is an Onslow County Republican who just won election to his first term in November as a 22-year-old East Carolina University student. 

Did he not realize the enthusiastic participation by Republican voters in early voting last November? Republicans have caught on to the pleasures that they had eschewed because early voting had been such a consistent practice among Democrats. But Republicans out-voted Democrats in 2024 early voting by over 166,000.

Yet genius Gable wants to inconvenience everyone. Republicans don't seem capable of pausing their assault on voting rights, even when a particular option has greatly favored them. 

When the Enemies of Democracy Are Judges

 

"The order didn’t give the legal reasoning to grant the GOP’s requests."

--Gary D. Robertson, reporting for AP 

As I predicted last week (wasn't it?), the Republican-heavy Court of Appeals has reversed the Wake County Superior Court judge who refused to stop the usage of UNC-Chapel Hill's brand new ID system, the "UNC One Card," as the approved NC ID for voting. The One Card meets all the standards of what a valid photo ID must contain, as written in the Republican law -- that was the ruling of the State Board of Elections (SBOE) which the Wake judge was upholding. 

But according to the NCGOP, the very notion of "digital ID" was a red flag, like "digital" identity -- flashed via hand-held phone -- was a new witchcraft for voter fraud. The Republicans actually chose to argue against the One Card that it just wasn't fair to all the other universities, which were forced to use physical, laminated plastic cards containing a photo -- letting Chapel Hill alone get away with this flashing of a cell phone to vote. Especially if the device was in the hands of a young voter. Why, Good Lard, with the UNC system you'll have ineligible voters by the billions casting ballots through electronic manipulation. That was the argument that caused three appellate judges to reverse the Superior Court. 

Oh yes, we're familiar with the Robinson Calculation, that someone nefarious is somehow and somewhere faking things on-line to make conservatives -- Robinson particularly -- look like frauds, because A.I. and gawd-knows-what-else can manipulate a computer to delete whole identities and steal votes and write bad checks, and they're doing it all the time to benefit Democrats. 

The Democratic National Committee and a UNC student group who joined the case defending the use of the One Card said the SBOE rightly determined that the digital ID met the requirements set in state law. The DNC attorneys wrote that preventing its use could confuse or even disenfranchise up to 40,000 people who work or attend the school so close to the election.

The NC Court of Appeals has an 11-4 Republican majority. The ruling discussed here. unanimous among three judges whose names are being kept secret for some reason -- just incidentally also "didn't give the legal reasoning to grant the GOP's requests." Three separate judges, eyeing each other across a conference table in Raleigh, agreed to do a favor for the NCGOP and rule that the Chapel Hill system did not constitute a valid photo ID. Is it not remarkable they won't put their names to this decision? For reasons we can immediately and accurately guess, if I were guessing. 

There's a Silver Lining: Students and permanent employees can still obtain a physical ID card instead -- conveniently at Chapel Hill locations and at no charge for those who received a digital ID but want the physical card for voting. There has got to be a major informational push on that campus to tell students where to go to get the other ID.

NCGOP Takes Another Shot at Stopping the Youth Vote

 

The whole world is going paperless, and only the NCGOP professes in court that they can't possibly believe that the digital world actually works. Instead of a physical card, encased in plastic and featuring a photo, UNC-Chapel Hill has gone wholly digital with student IDs. Any student can present their phone as proof of identity, with a photo and other identifying details that any fool can see is legitimate. (Why, begorra, you have long been able to flash your phone to get on an international flight.) Other universities not to mention businesses and agencies, are bound to follow the trend, and more paperless IDs will become common.

But the GOP sued in Wake Superior Court the week of Sept. 9th to halt the use of the mobile UNC One Card as legal identity. Superior Court Judge Keith Gregory denied the Republicans a temporary restraining order on Thurs., Sept. 19, and for not the first time, the haters of the young got rooked in court.

Unclear whether the GOP intends to appeal, but sure, it will, and its chances of getting judges on the side of disenfranchisement up the ladder remains strong in this tyrannized state.

Just Another Day in the Clown Car

 

Rep. George Cleveland,
cheerleading his H 1071 last Thursday

Let's put election deniers in charge of purging North Carolina's voter rolls! Yeah, baby!

Can't imagine why it's taken this long to think of the next brilliant solution to the greatest problem vexing North Carolina -- too many people voting.

NC House member George Cleveland (R-Onslow) just last Thursday introduced H 1071, a bill that would force all county boards of elections to establish a new system for investigating and correcting data provided by “election integrity” organizations to assist in maintenance of the state’s voter registration lists.

In case you haven't been paying attention, "election integrity" is code among election deniers for using idiotic claims of massive voter fraud to harass as many progressive voters as possible, particularly those with skin pigmentation slightly darker than George Cleveland's. This is merely another attempt to take power away from our State Board of Elections and give the right to vote to partisan manipulators who can, on any given day, find hoards of people who need to be eliminated (and not just from voter rolls).

In a House discussion of Cleveland's proposed legislation (reported on by Clayton Henkel),

“How is a voter integrity group defined?” asked [Democrat] Rep. Ashton Wheeler Clemmons.

“Actually, it’s two or three people who have years of experience in data collection and data usage. There’s two that are prominent here in North Carolina,” Cleveland responded....

“So my question is can you name a group?” asked [Democrat] Rep. Allison Dahle.

“I can name two,” said Cleveland. “I don’t know what the gentleman’s real name is. It’s Totes Legit. He has consistently over the past several years sent voter list problems to the state board. And there’s a Ms. Snow out in Morganton.”

“I didn’t hear the names,” Dahle asked him to repeat himself.

“Totes Legit. That’s what he calls himself. I don’t know what the gentleman’s name is.”

Seriously? Reporter Henkel went looking for Ms. Snow and "Totes Legit" (who sounds totally legit):

In Georgia, anonymous claims of voter fraud from someone going by the name ‘Totes Legit’ were dismissed last October. It’s unclear if that is the same person Cleveland was referencing.

The second person Cleveland mentioned, Carol Snow of the NC Audit Force filed a complaint with the elections board claiming inadequate maintenance of the computerized registered voter list put the state out of compliance with the 2002 federal voting law.

Snow presented examples of what appeared to be duplicate voter registrations. In one example, a son with the same name as his father was mistakenly checked in as his father. The father and son both received ballots and each voted once.

As NC Newline reported in April, the Board of Elections rejected Snow’s complaint about duplicate voter registrations

What is funnier? That this walking joke from Onslow County has introduced his bright new idea for interfering with the work of election officials or that H 1071 by last Friday had been fast-tracked through the House Rules Committee and three subsequent floor votes (66-45) and now heads to the Senate. Though it didn't get there in time for action, as the Senate adjourned sine die. Thank God. But this will come back next term. You can bet on it.

The NC Voter ID Law Goes To Trial (Again)

 

At 9:30 tomorrow morning in the federal courthouse in Winston-Salem, federal District Judge Loretta Biggs will begin hearing evidence in the latest challenge to North Carolina's voter ID law. The newest version of that law has been in effect since before the March primary, but its history is twisted (in the truest sense of that word), and for its long string of court challenges you almost need a roadmap.

The case has the potential to block the state’s voter ID requirement before the 2024 election — though an appeal is likely regardless of which way Biggs rules. 

The North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP first sued the state over its voter ID requirement in 2018, setting in motion a case that has now lasted over five years, ricocheting between appellate courts and conflicting with a similar case at the state level. 

In its trial brief, the NAACP argues that the voter ID requirement “was enacted with discriminatory intent” in violation of the U.S. Constitution and “has already had a discriminatory impact on the right of Black and Latino citizens in North Carolina to participate in the political process.” [Kyle Ingram]