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Elections board Democrats criticize Legislature's early voting order

By Amy McCraw, Associate Editor, Published: October 29, 2024

Bending to the will of the N.C. Legislature, the Henderson County Board of Elections expanded early voting opportunities last week from one site to four but not without taking shots at the lawmakers’ power play.

“Personally, I am very disturbed about this. I find it absolutely reprehensible,” elections board Chair Clay Eddleman said of the Legislature’s decision to force Henderson and one other mountain county to add voting sites. “We have a system that is working. Why mess with it?”
The General Assembly passed Senate Bill 132, titled “An Act to Require or Authorize the Addition of Early Voting Sites in Certain Counties for the November 2024 Election,” on Thursday afternoon.

The bill ordered elections boards in the 13 most impacted counties from Hurricane Helene to open at least one early voting site for every 30,000 registered voters in their county. All but two counties already met that threshold; Henderson and McDowell counties were the only ones that did not. Henderson County has more than 92,000 registered voters and, until Tuesday, had only one early voting site.

County boards of elections are made up of two Democrats and two Republicans recommended by county party committees and appointed by the state Board of Elections. The chair is appointed by Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat.

Eddleman called an emergency meeting on Friday to respond to the bill. Board member Sharon Pearson, a Democrat, also slammed the Legislature’s move to override county boards’ authority.

“What does this say about us here?” she said. Elections Director Summer Heatherly “put this whole thing together. How can they come in and just sort of cut her off at the knees? What does it say about us as a board?”
The controversy, Heatherly added, has strained the elections board staff.
“It has hurt my team because they have worked so hard to make sure every voter has the chance to vote,” she said.

Edneyville over Flat Rock

During the meeting on Friday, Eddleman suggested the board meet the bill’s mandate by opening early voting sites in Fletcher, Flat Rock and Etowah, three locations previously used in primary and general elections.
But Republican board member Debbie Dante said the Justice Academy in Edneyville was a better location for early voting than Flat Rock Village Hall because Flat Rock is close to the voting site at the Board of Elections, and because the Justice Academy is near Bat Cave and Gerton, which were especially hard hit by Helene. Ultimately, the board voted for the Edneyville site over Flat Rock.

In response to a board member’s question about how the staff would handle additional early voting sites, Heatherly said she did not plan to shift resources from the current location at the Board of Elections to the new ones.
“We will be doing the bare minimum” at the three new sites, she said. “Will there be lines? Yes.”
But she said the short wait at the Board of Elections will not change because no people or machines will be moved to the other locations.
“It’s not going to do anything here,” she said.

Eddleman and Heatherly said voting at the Board of Elections has been successful; more than 24,000 residents had voted there as of last Thursday.
Dante said her suggestion to have early voting at the Justice Academy was not about the efficiency of the current location. She said she only wanted to reach out to more voters. Board member Linda Rebuck, a Republican, also agreed that the Board of Elections site is well run but said state lawmakers may have thought the Henderson County elections board was flouting the Legislature’s will when it gave hurricane-impacted counties more options to expand voting.
“It’s optics, I think,” Rebuck said.