Throughout the two-hour Granville County Board of Elections meeting Wednesday afternoon in Oxford, attendees became increasingly agitated. By the end, several audience members continuously interrupted discussions to ask questions and make calls for Republican board members to resign.
Thursday morning, the State Board of Elections met in Raleigh to discuss new election rules and county board member complaints. While it was a much quieter discussion, Democratic members appeared equally as concerned about the perception of partisanship in the board’s decisions.
Elections are inherently political. In North Carolina, state and local election board members are nominated by political parties and appointed by the state auditor. Before a 2025 shift, the governor, another elected official, made those appointments. However, many voters expect election administrators to strive for nonpartisanship in their decisions.
After the auditor made his appointments, which shifted election boards from majority Democrat to majority Republican, there’s been a brighter spotlight on local and state board decisions. Some have expressed concern about a greater perception of partisanship.
Granville County elections board doubles down
When Granville County election board members met in June to discuss early voting, then-Republican chair Larue Ulshafer made a few suggestions.
In previous years, the county conducted early voting at two sites in the southern part of the county: at Tar River Elementary, in Franklinton, and South Branch Library, in Creedmoor. The third site was downtown, at the Oxford Public Works building.
During the last two midterm elections, the downtown site was the most popular, attracting more than 40% of the county’s early voters, while about 35% came to the South Branch Library to vote. These two sites are also located in more Democratic areas with higher Black voting age populations than other parts of the county.
Ulshafer’s plan would close the South Branch site to open a new site in the northern part of the county, in order to achieve geographic diversity. It would also move the downtown site from the public works building to the Granville County Convention & Expo Center, about 5 miles south.
“The boss said, ‘My vision is we have free and equal voting across the county’ — north, south and central — and that’s what we’re working towards,’ ” Ulshafer said at the time, referring to Auditor Dave Boliek.
Democratic board member Teresa Gilreath questioned whether there were also partisan motivations at play.
“By the time we finish doing all of the changes that are proposed today, we will end up with all our precincts in Republican territory, non-Democratic territory, non-African American territories,” she said during the June meeting.
Ultimately, the board voted 3-2, along party lines, to adopt Ulshafer’s plan. He has since resigned from the board.
In the face of public pressure, county commissioners agreed to fund a fourth early voting site, if the election board reconsidered.
Wednesday, the election board met for that purpose, but nothing changed, except that the vote count was 2-2 instead of 3-2 without the former chair.
During public comment, attendees who supported accepting the commissioner’s offer and adding South Branch back into the mix said the current sites are popular, and that having a four-site plan could be a win for both parties.
Attendees in favor of the Republican plan argued that parking and pedestrian traffic issues cause problems at the South Branch and downtown Oxford sites, that the new northern site might be just as popular and that voters who are inconvenienced by the plan can vote absentee or on Election Day.
Republican board members Doug Smith and Debby Butler were not willing to accept the commissioners’ offer. For more than an hour, Democratic board members and audience members repeatedly asked why.
While both did not say much, Butler said she thought the three-site plan was “reasonable” and “geographically distributed,” while Smith said he was concerned about the safety of voters and students at South Branch Library, a high-pedestrian traffic area which abuts Vance-Granville Community College.
“No matter where the location is, it’s always going to be more convenient for somebody, less convenient for somebody else,” Smith said.
According to County Beacon reporting and photographs by Cole Rodger, former chairman of the Granville County Republican Party, Michael Magnanto, was texting Smith and Butler during the meeting with advice about what to say.
It appears that at least Butler listened.
Democratic member Sharyn Alvarez was skeptical that the issue was just about parking lots and pedestrian safety, and asked Republican board members to also weigh other concerns, including voter access and potential long lines at the single southern site.
“It is bad business for Granville County for us to be going down this path unnecessarily for partisanship reasons,” she said.
Throughout the meeting, several audience members also accused Republican board members of partisanship, and asked them to step down from their positions.
After the meeting, Paul Latorre told Carolina Public Press that he noticed Smith speaking to the county Republican Party vice chair Jacob Moore before the meeting. While he doesn’t know what they were talking about, it makes Smith’s decision “look a little suspicious,” he said.
Moore had no comment on the decision, but said the emotion on both sides of the issue was “very called for.”
“It is wonderful to see the actions of democracy in process,” he said.
The nonunanimous early voting plan will still go to the State Board of Elections for a final decision.
One county, two outcomes
The State Board decided Thursday on whether to conduct a hearing on two duelling Pitt County election board complaints.
Republican board chair Neal Driver and other Republican board members filed the first against Democratic board member Etsil Mason. Mason filed the second against Driver.
Both involve an unnamed Black county employee’s allegations that Election Director Janet Turner was creating a hostile work environment and treating her differently based on her race. The employee filed a complaint against Turner with Driver in February, but he did not address it until the employee had also contacted the county human resources department and the State Board of Elections about her complaint. Mason asked Driver to interview staff about the allegations.
In March, Driver conducted interviews with the employee who filed the complaint and other staff. On April 10, the employee was fired.
In her State Board complaint, Mason alleged that Driver asked Turner to fire the employee because she suggested he might have a bias against her during the interview, where Mason was also present. She said Driver mischaracterized her tone as hostile, and that neither the election director nor Driver could make dismissal decisions without bringing it to the entire board.
She said she asked for a closed session during their next meeting to make that decision. When that didn’t happen, she spoke out about the personnel issues in an open meeting, which is not allowed for confidentiality reasons.
Driver’s complaint to the State Board is based on Mason’s public statements during the meeting and to the news media about the personnel issue. The complaint alleges that Mason used public pressure and media to try and force Turner’s resignation, which undermined the board’s authority.
Mason also alleged that several meetings of board members violated the open meetings law, which prohibits a majority of board members from meeting to discuss board business without public notice. Mason alleges that the three Republican board members met privately to draft a statement to the news media about the incident without letting the Democratic members or the public know.
In party line votes, the State Board decided to bring the Mason complaint to a hearing, and dismiss the Driver complaint based on a lack of evidence that any election law violation occurred.
State Board Democrat Siobhan Millen said the open meetings violations in the Driver complaint were just as “problematic” as the allegations in the Mason complaint.
The State Board also dismissed complaints against two other Republican county election board members elsewhere in the state with 4-1 votes: Johnston County board member David Spain and Columbus County board chair Jillian McPherson-Edge.
New election rules for photo ID rejection, noise
The State Board also voted along party lines to approve several new sets of election rules, which will now go to the Rules Review Commission for final approval.
Two of the sets of rules elicited substantial public input.
Among other changes, proposed photo ID rules would lower the standard for rejecting a photo ID exception from unanimous agreement that the form was false to majority agreement. Most of the public comments opposed this change.
Millen warned about the political perception of the change.
“I think that concern is well-founded: that if a majority is going to vote as a bloc a lot, and that is going to make these photo ID debates at the county level into a very partisan vote,” she said. “And I think that’s highly disruptive to voters’ trust in elections. So I think we’re opening ourselves up to potential problems.”
Republican board member Angela Hawkins, who previously served on the Wake County election board, said she doubts the change will lead to many more provisional ballots being rejected, since it’s very difficult to prove a falsity on an exception form.
Another set of proposed voting site rules would ban noise at voting sites if it is loud enough for the chief judge to hear inside, lasts for more than a minute or happens repeatedly. The goal is to avoid disturbing voters, but many public commenters expressed concerns that the rule would violate their First Amendment rights and prevent events like Party at the Polls meant to excite a new generation of voters.
Republican board member Stacy “Four” Eggers said the rule gives chief judges a legal tool to maintain order at voting sites. Millen suggested that the solution might be worse than the problem.
“If the Party to the Polls were playing the Village People’s YMCA would we be here having this topic, this question about people being disturbed while voting?” Democratic board member Jeff Carmon asked.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You may republish our stories for free, online or in print. Simply copy and paste the article contents from the box below. Note, some images and interactive features may not be included here.
