Earlier this year State Auditor Dave Boliek put a former leader of the North Carolina Republican Party, Dallas Woodhouse, in charge of overseeing county elections boards. Woodhouse resigned last week amid allegations of putting pressure on some of those boards to make partisan decisions for how voting will operate this year.
Now, the Democratic members of the State Board of Elections are seeking an investigation into the extent and motivation of Woodhouse’s activity, particularly as it surrounds recent decisions by county elections boards to eliminate early voting options on Sundays or on college campuses. However, it doesn’t appear they’ll get very far with the request after facing strong pushback from the board’s Republican majority.
Other WRAL Top Stories
Democratic board member Jeff Carmon suggested during a meeting Thursday that the board subpoena Woodhouse, and require him to testify under oath.
“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.”
A spokesman for Boliek didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. Woodhouse declined to comment beyond what he had previously written in his resignation letter.
In that letter Woodhouse outlined his duties, defended his work carrying them out and said that Boliek and the state’s elections officials are doing good work.
“I remain optimistic about North Carolina’s outstanding election system and believe there are important opportunities to strengthen it even further for the coming decades through continued investment in election professionals, technology, and voter access,” Woodhouse wrote. “I will continue to support those efforts wherever I can.”
Republican board member Stacy Eggers IV shut Carmon down Thursday, refusing his request to allow a vote on whether to subpoena Woodhouse.
Eggers first said it would set a bad precedent since Woodhouse has now resigned and is a private citizen. Carmon replied that that made no sense since he was asking for an investigation into Woodhouse’s actions as a state employee, not as a private citizen. Eggers then said Carmon should drop it before the board’s GOP majority starts issuing its own subpoenas to various current or former staffers of Democratic governors Josh Stein and Roy Cooper, who used to oversee the elections board before the state legislature stripped that power from the governor.
“I think that going down this line is ill-advised,” Eggers told Carmon before shutting down the debate and moving the meeting ahead.
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. 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 reported. And Guilford County elections officials shot down requests earlier this year to open campus polling places at N.C A&T University and UNC-Greensboro.
College students tend to lean Democratic, so critics viewed the decisions as intended to help Republican candidates in this year’s elections.
Similarly, several counties around the state have also begun ending Sunday voting opportunities during early voting. Black voters, who lean heavily Democratic, vote on Sundays disproportionately more than white voters, who lean Republican. A past effort by Republican state lawmakers to end Sunday voting statewide was part of a broader change to election laws that was struck down in 2016 in federal court as unconstitutional, due to intentional racial discrimination against Black voters.
Carmon said that he asked for ground rules to be set when Boliek first hired Woodhouse to be Boliek’s liaison to county elections officials, but that never happened. Carmon suggested Thursday that perhaps the board’s GOP majority should’ve listened to him back then and possibly avoided this situation.
“I expressed concern about the confusion this ambiguity could create for newly appointed county board members,” Carmon said. “Unfortunately, as recent events have demonstrated, the consequences appear to be far more serious than simple confusion.”