Most upcoming local elections in Moore County would be postponed by a year and turned into partisan contests under a bill approved Tuesday in the state House of Representatives.
The bill, which passed the chamber along party lines, would cancel Moore County’s 2027 and 2029 municipal elections, moving them to 2028 and 2030, and require local elections to continue in even-numbered years. Everyone currently in office would have their terms extended a year to adjust to that new schedule, which supporters say will help boost voter turnout.
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The bill would also require 11 towns in the county — Aberdeen, Cameron, Carthage, Foxfire Village, Pinebluff, Pinehurst, Robbins, Southern Pines, Taylortown, Vass and Whispering Pines — plus the Moore County Board of Education to switch over to partisan elections.
It’s part of a broader trend of state lawmakers pushing legislation that would affect local politics, such as for school boards and city councils. If approved, Moore County would become the 47th school board around the state to have its elections turned partisan. The bill still needs final approval by the state Senate, which also has a Republican majority.
Supporters of the switch to partisan elections say it boosts transparency. But critics say it could unnecessarily inject national politics into local issues.
In partisan elections, candidates’ political parties are listed next to their names on the ballot. In nonpartisan elections, the ballot lists only their name and not their party. Voters who are affiliated with a party are generally more likely to vote for a candidate representing their party if the candidates’ affiliation is known. In recent years the legislature has tended to make local elections partisan in more conservative-leaning areas, while keeping them nonpartisan in more liberal areas.
During Tuesday's debate over the bill Rep. Deb Butler, D-New Hanover, questioned whether the residents of Moore County will benefit from having their town councils and school board be made more explicitly partisan.
“Congratulations to them,” Butler said. “Because they can now mire down in the rank partisanship that we are seeing across this country and across this state. It's coming to your neighborhood. If you were getting along with each other before, hold on. It's going to get ugly.”
The bill’s sponsor, Moore County Republican Rep. Neal Jackson, said local politics are already injected with partisan issues and so telling voters which party the candidates belong to is simply just an effort to help better educate voters.
“This whole idea that, ‘Well, you shouldn't be partisan’ — our whole world is partisan,” Jackson said. “And so, I would just say that this shows transparency.”
The legislature has already made similar changes in much of the state. It’s unclear why they’re only now focusing on Moore County, where Republicans heavily outnumber Democrats. Jackson said the change was requested by the county commissioners. The county commissioners are already elected in partisan elections during even-numbered years, the same change this bill would make for the rest of local governments.
The example of the county commissioners could foreshadow how other local elections might go in the future, if this change becomes law.
In 2024, in nonpartisan elections for the Moore County Board of Education, all four seats on the ballot that year were contested. Three of the four races ended up competitive.
But the county’s partisan races that same year were a different story. The Moore County Democratic Party didn’t bother running candidates for any of the partisan local races. Two county commissioners, the district attorney and four judges, all Republicans, won uncontested elections with no opposition.