News

Both parties blast reduction of early voting sites

By Amy B. McCraw, Associate Editor, Published: October 23, 2024

Changes to early voting in Henderson County created traffic congestion and left some voters feeling confused as the first day of voting got underway last week.

“That is going to cause some headache,” Elections Specialist Aaron Troutman acknowledged of the new traffic pattern created for early voting at the Board of Elections.
Traffic going to the voting location is required to turn right off Old Spartanburg Highway into the Board of Elections. Drivers are not allowed to enter the location from Spartanburg Highway.
Last Thursday, the first day of early voting, a section of Spartanburg Highway was narrowed to one lane for drivers heading toward the elections office from East Flat Rock. Drivers heading in that direction on Thursday afternoon encountered bumper-to-bumper traffic on Spartanburg Highway from Brooklyn Avenue to the Board of Elections. Traffic also backed up along Old Spartanburg Highway as drivers entered the O’Reilly Auto Parts parking lot. Voters parked at the parts store and were shuttled to the Board of Elections next door.
Troutman said the change in traffic pattern was made to prevent drivers from attempting to turn left at the voting site.
“We’ve seen so many accidents from people trying to turn left,” he said. “We wanted to eliminate anyone turning left.”

Some voters found the new route confusing.
Gale Holm, 66, of Hendersonville, said she reached the voting site only after making two attempts.
“It was not well marked,” she said.
But Holm said she did not wait long to vote once she arrived.
She said she wanted to vote on the first day of early voting “just because I feel that strongly about who is running our country and who is running our town and state.”
Holm said she votes blue.

Early voting sites slashed from four to one

One reason for more traffic is the decision by the Board of Elections to reduce the number of early voting sites in the county from four to the one.
Lou and Angela Nettina, of Hendersonville, did not know their usual early voting site had been dropped until they went to cast a ballot on Thursday.
“We promptly went to the wrong place in Fletcher,” 69-year-old Lou said with a smile. “We just assumed it was going to be in the same place.”
The couple searched the internet for more information after they found the parking lot at Fletcher empty.
They eventually found their way to the Board of Elections, where they both said they voted for Donald Trump for president.
Angela, 64, said they did not have to wait once they got inside the voting site. The traffic was also manageable, she said.
“It looked worse than it was,” she said.

By 12:30 p.m. on Thursday, 1,800 voters had cast their ballots at the Board of Elections, Troutman said. Many came early in the morning to vote and the site remained busy much of the day.
Elections workers encountered no major problems or delays for voters, Troutman said.
“There is not a wait,” he said. “A lot of people are expecting to have a wait and there’s not one.”

Across the state, more than 353,000 ballots were cast on Thursday, breaking the record set in 2020 for the first day of early voting.

Christopher A. Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University, and Michael Bitzer, an expert on North Carolina politics at Catawba College in Salisbury, cautioned in a blog post against reading too much into the data, the New York Times reported.

Cooper pointed out on X that the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene in Western North Carolina could significantly affect turnout. In Buncombe County, the blue island in the solid red N.C. mountains, more than 33,000 voters turned out on the first day of early voting in 2020. Last Thursday, however, only about 8,200 turned out.

Hendersonville site is ‘most efficient’

Clay Eddleman, the chairman of the county’s Board of Elections, defended the reduction of early voting sites and explained the new traffic pattern during a meeting of the county Board of Commissioners last Wednesday. Elections officials, he said, had determined that early voting sites other than the one at the Board of Elections were underutilized. (Besides Fletcher, others dropped were Flat Rock Village Hall and Etowah library.)
“We took a look at these. People were traveling by the existing early voting site and voting at the Board of Elections,” Eddleman said.
Eddleman said some locations had only one person vote all day while others lacked adequate facilities for workers.
At a recent meeting one Board of Elections member made a motion to reconsider the plan to reduce the voting sites to one. But the motion and second was withdrawn after the two members heard more about the reasons to operate only one site, Eddleman said. The decision to drop three voting sites saved the county $85,000, he added.
The early voting location at the Board of Elections has 16 voter check-in stations, 58 voting machines, four tabulators and numerous elections workers to assist voters.
During the primary, the voting location at the Board of Elections was the busiest and most efficient site in the state, Eddleman said.

Both parties blast voting site reduction

Both political parties slammed the decision to reduce the number of early voting sites.

Bruce Macdonald, an attorney for Henderson County’s Democratic Party, first raised the alarm about the reduction in voting sites on Sept. 21, a week before Hurricane Helene.

“With a historic get-out-the-vote effort underway by the Henderson County Democratic Party, and I’m sure by the Republican Party as well, I find it mind boggling that early-voting sites have been reduced from four to one,” Macdonald said in an email last Thursday. “At a time when voter suppression is often subtle, but many times not so subtle, and with an upcoming election that is more consequential than perhaps any we have seen, it is hard to understand why the Henderson County Board of Elections made this decision. And it is harder to understand why the vote was unanimous. The fact that the decision might have saved the county $85,000 is not sufficient justification. With a county this large and a population of 119,000, you maintain or increase — not eliminate — early-voting sites.”
Information from the state Board of Elections shows that nearby counties smaller than Henderson have multiple early voting sites, Macdonald pointed out four weeks ago. Transylvania, Madison and Haywood counties each have three early voting sites; Jackson County has five. Other counties in WNC that have only one site have much smaller populations than Henderson County, Macdonald said.
“By all accounts, the staff of the Board of Elections does an admirable job under difficult circumstances,” Macdonald said. “My issue is not with them, but with the board members who made this inexplicable change.”

RNC Chairman Michael Whatley, the former chair of the N.C. GOP, issued a statement that blamed the decision on Democrats, even though the two Republicans on the county Elections Board voted in favor of the change.

“This blatant election interference by North Carolina Democrats will not be tolerated, and we are demanding they expand voting sites immediately,” he said. In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, the county should be adding voting sites, not eliminating them, the RNC said on Oct. 17.

“Last week, the North Carolina State Board of Elections corrected their guidance to allow county board of elections to expand the number of early voting sites for hurricane-impacted voters,” the GOP said. “The Democrat members of the Henderson County board has refused to expand these sites, despite the actions of the NCSBE and the North Carolina Legislature’s new law.”

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Early voting is available at the Board of Elections Office, 75 E. Central St., off Spartanburg Highway. Hours are 8 a.m.-7:30 p.m. Monday-Friday and 8 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 2.

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