Newly Republican NC boards vote to cut campus polling sites, Sunday voting

Good morning and welcome to Under the Dome!

I’m Kyle Ingram, The News & Observer’s Democracy Reporter and host of today’s newsletter.

Election preparation in North Carolina begins early and often comes with a high degree of contention among local officials, who are tasked with deciding when and where people can cast their ballots.

At least six counties’ election boards have failed to unanimously approve an early voting plan for the March primary election, fueled by disagreements over on-campus polling sites and Sunday voting. And many more counties have yet to approve a plan at all.

These sorts of disagreements are common, but their ultimate resolution could be handled differently in the wake of a massive restructuring of North Carolina’s election apparatus earlier this year.

When county election boards can’t agree on an early voting plan, the dispute is kicked up to the State Board of Elections, which has the final say.

That board, because of controversial legislation passed last year that strips the governor of his appointment power, is now controlled by Republicans for the first time in nearly a decade.

And while previous state boards tended to favor the more expansive option when presented with competing early voting plans, the new majority may not be so inclined.

Here’s a look at some of the disputes the state board will have to weigh in on soon:

Voting sites on college campuses

Election boards in Jackson and Guilford counties have both failed to reach an agreement on whether they should offer early voting sites on college campuses.

In Jackson, the board’s new Republican majority voted 3-2 on a plan that eliminates a polling site at Western Carolina University, which had been in use for nearly a decade.

The board’s chair, Bill Thompson, said the site was not accessible to all voters and was a waste of tax money, Blue Ridge Public Radio reported.

Chris Cooper, a political scientist at WCU, published an analysis on the university’s voting site which found that it served an outsize proportion of young and diverse voters compared to the rest of the county’s polling places.

In fact, WCU’s early voting site had the youngest average voter age of any site in the entire state in the 2024 primary election, Cooper found.

Evie Grey, a WCU student and vice president of the university’s Student Democracy Coalition, said that without the on-campus voting site, students would have to walk 30 minutes and across a four-lane highway to get to the next closest polling place.

“WCU’s campus is already in an extremely rural area that is difficult to traverse without a vehicle,” Grey said in an email. “Students who do not have a car already struggle to consistently go to the store. Not having an on-campus voting site could completely remove not only students’ access to vote, but also faculty and staff who don’t have time to vote off campus between work.”

In Guilford County, Republican board members rejected a proposal to include early voting sites at UNC Greensboro and North Carolina A&T State University.

“Voting is a privilege,” Board Chair Eugene Lester III said at a Nov. 18 meeting. “Voting requires the citizens to actually take some action, to do some things, to discharge a duty — and it may require some work on the citizens’ parts.”

UNCG and NC A&T both had early voting sites in the 2024 primary election, but not in the 2022 midterm primary election.

Getting rid of Sunday voting

In Harnett and Craven counties, board members split over whether to host early voting on Sundays, with the Republican majorities voting to eliminate it.

In Craven, the Democratic minority sought to add one day of Sunday voting, as the county did in the last presidential primary. But the Republican majority disagreed, opting for a plan with no Sunday voting, as was done in the last midterm primary.

In Harnett, the board’s Republicans argued that not enough people used Sunday voting for it to be worth the cost.

“Look at the money we can save just by cutting out early voting on Sundays,” Harnett County board member Rickie Day said at a Nov. 4 meeting. “It’s not needed.”

In the last midterm election, Harnett held two days of Sunday voting. The new plan would have none.

What’s next

Counties must submit their early voting plans to the State Board of Elections by Dec. 19.

Then, the board will review all the non-unanimous plans and decide on a resolution.

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Kyle Ingram

The News & Observer

Kyle Ingram is the Democracy Reporter for the News & Observer. He reports on voting rights, election administration, the state judicial branch and more. He is a graduate of the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at UNC-Chapel Hill.