|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Bill McNutt has been involved in politics for decades. The 83-year-old Republican worked as a lobbyist from New York to Washington, served as a federal court reporter in Arizona, and got involved with the local GOP as soon as he moved to North Carolina in 2013.
Two years ago, McNutt was appointed to the Harnett County Board of Elections, joining a body where his party was in the minority. Board members across the state pledge to stay publicly neutral on specific candidates and ballot initiatives.
McNutt said he maintained a healthy degree of skepticism when the Democratic-controlled State Board of Elections issued guidance. But that didn’t keep him from performing the duties he found essential to the local board’s mission: recruiting and retaining elections staff, reducing wait times, and reaching out to voters to encourage registration and turnout.
This spring McNutt and Jim Currin, the other sitting Republican on the board and a retired public school teacher, sought reappointment. But McNutt said that at a county GOP meeting in May, Harnett County Board of Education member Bradley Abate spoke ill of him.
“The fella actually told the voting people in the committee that I worked with the Democrats, colluded with them, that I’m a liar, and I’m not representing the Republicans at all,” McNutt said. Months earlier, McNutt stood up for the board of elections’ right to use public schools as polling places, opposing a joint resolution to restrict schools from elections.
“Absolutely I was against him, and I believe we have got much better members on our board of elections now,” Abate told The Assembly, but denied calling McNutt a liar. He noted that elected county leadership had wanted to remove schools as early voting sites for years, and took issue with McNutt speaking publicly against their position.
Harnett County is one of five counties where Republicans recently cleaned house on their county board of elections. Critics say they spurned some GOP incumbents in favor of new faces who will promote a more partisan agenda.
Jim Womack, the president of the nonprofit North Carolina Election Integrity Team and the chair of the Lee County GOP, is among those alarmed by the changes. Womack considers McNutt among the top two Harnett County Republicans “in the elections space” and says he would have liked for him to be appointed chair.
The maneuvering on the local boards is the latest move in the decade-long battle the North Carolina GOP has waged to gain control over elections since losing the governor’s office in 2016.
After voters elected another Democratic governor last November, the Republican-controlled state legislature passed legislation shifting election appointment powers from the governor to the newly elected Republican state auditor, Dave Boliek, allowing him to appoint the chair of each county’s five-member board.
The bill effectively shifted the majority on county and state elections boards from Democratic to Republican. The other four members on the county boards, two Democrats and two Republicans, are recommended by county party chairs and appointed by the State Board of Elections.
Despite the number of Republican seats increasing from 200 to 300 statewide, one in four counties will lose an incumbent GOP member, a move that some elections observers see as unusually high turnover.
Statewide, 31 counties now have a board chair who wasn’t on the board last term.
The changes don’t startle Margo Ackiss, a Republican activist from Cherokee County best known by her online social media handle “MargoinWNC.” Ackiss noted two reasons for turnover: Many of the party’s election board members are older and may have sought to retire, and local GOP leadership may seek more partisan members.
“If they feel like there’s some go-alongers-to-get-alongers, you’ll see some clean house,” Ackiss said of local GOP leadership.
In a statement, Danna Vazquez, the chair of the Harnett County GOP, rejected the notion that the 100 county boards previously acted in a nonpartisan way.
“[T]he tables are turned and all are now majority Republican and our voters are expecting to see things that have been stalled for nearly a decade get moving,” Vazquez said in her statement. She pointed to a recent policy change requiring the State Board of Elections to collect more complete information about registered voters as an example.
But the volume of turnover and the appearance that some appointees were selected for political reasons alarm current and past board members, election directors, and democracy advocates from both parties.
“It’s a disservice to the citizens in the county because the people they have replaced me and the other Republican [with]—the majority that is coming in—don’t have anywhere near, not even an ounce of experience,” McNutt said.
‘Absolute Loyalty’
Margaret Megerian took the center seat at the front of the Randolph County Board of Elections meeting in June. To her left sat her two Republican colleagues; on her right, chairs for her two fellow Democrats. Combined, the five members have more than 42 years of experience serving on the board. But at the next meeting on July 22, only Megerian will be back at the front of the room.
Mary Joan Pugh and Tyler Brooks, the two incumbent Republicans, sought reappointment, and their bona fides would have qualified either as chair. But when it came time for the county Republican officers to vote, Rick Smith, the chair of the Randolph County GOP, presented four names that didn’t include the incumbents. While two have run for office or managed campaigns, none of the four has experience conducting elections.
“It’s because I worked with [the Democrats], they trusted me, and I trusted them—we weren’t adversarial, and I think our [county GOP] chairman thought we should be more,” said Pugh, who served in the administrations of North Carolina’s last two Republican governors, Jim Martin and Pat McCrory.
In heavily red Randolph County, registered Republicans outnumber Democrats more than 3-to-1. While Democrats controlled the county elections board, that didn’t stop Pugh from getting Republicans appointed as chief judges for early voting sites, having the board’s meetings recorded, agreeing on budgets, and compromising on early voting days to exclude Sundays.
“You get more done when you work together. I’m a moderate person. I think I served the Republican Party really well,” Pugh said.
Some Randolph County Republicans said that Pugh and Brooks weren’t reappointed because they didn’t bend a knee to Smith, adding that the new appointments were chosen for political gain.
“The party chairman demands absolute loyalty. If he puts someone on the board, he wants someone absolutely loyal to him,” said Clayton Ballentine, a conservative activist and Asheboro resident.
Ballentine said that Pugh, who has served on numerous state and local boards and is the former deputy director of the North Carolina Zoo, and Brooks, a constitutional lawyer and member of the Federalist Society who was previously active in pro-life advocacy, upheld their nonpartisan oath while in office, but they were often chastised by Smith.
“The fella actually told the voting people in the committee that I worked with the Democrats, colluded with them, that I’m a liar, and I’m not representing the Republicans at all.”
Bill McNutt, former Harnett County Board of Elections member
State law requires that elections board members not hold another party office, cannot have a spouse, parent, or child in office, and cannot post anything on social media supporting or opposing candidates for public office.
In an April letter to the Randolph County GOP executive committee, Pugh wrote that Smith’s behavior “is not only unprofessional but totally out of line and an embarrassment to the County Republican Party.” Pugh said Smith seeks to speak outside of public comment period during elections board meetings, treats the two Republican board members “as his employees,” and has a “tyrannical leadership” style.
Smith told The Assembly that he forwarded Pugh’s letter to the county GOP’s executive committee but declined further comment.
That a party chair would intervene in a board member’s duties disturbs Pete Oldham, a Democrat on the Randolph County election board who is departing after two stints covering 16 years.
“I never had anybody in my party tell me I should vote a certain way,” Oldham said. “I hate to see the board moving towards more partisanship because I think that’s only going to make the public mistrust what we do over the next couple of years.”
The new Republican board members Smith nominated are longtime deputy sheriff Aundrea Azelton for chair, assistant district attorney Paige Albertson Fish, and former state Rep. Allen McNeill, who also worked for the county sheriff’s office for three decades.
“There are concerns that there are people that are getting rewarded as a political favor, as opposed to their working knowledge and their experience in elections,” Womack said.
In his role with the N.C. Election Integrity Team, which trains poll observers and pushes for changes in state election law, Womack hears scuttlebutt from across the state. But he could count on one hand the number of counties where he had “real, genuine concerns” about appointments. Randolph is among them. (CBS reported last year that Womack had told poll observers to flag voters with Hispanic-sounding names; Womack told The Assembly there were a combination of factors that could compel a poll observer to pay closer attention, including not having identification and not being able to produce proof of a home address.)
Azelton’s appointment raised eyebrows in Randolph County. She previously helped run Republican sheriff Greg Seabolt’s campaign in Randolph County in 2018, while working for the Alamance county sheriff’s office. She retired from the Randolph sheriff’s office at the end of March.
“I don’t remember that having been a problem before where people were appointed who had those types of ties, or where they had been a candidate for anything,” Oldham said about Azelton and McNeill. “Both of them were employed with the sheriff’s office at different times. If [an election matter] involved the sheriff, they would need to remove themselves.”
In the past, board members recused themselves, Megerian said, noting that both she and Brooks opted not to vote on different occasions. “It’s a small community, so conflicts do pop up,” she said.
“[With Azelton] appointed chair, we’re going to have to handle that very delicately because sheriff’s races are also the most contentious races that we have here,” Megerian said. “Even if everyone is acting in good faith, the appearance of impropriety—the appearance of whether an election is fair—is just as important.”
In December 2022, Azelton was deposed as part of a federal civil suit in which the plaintiffs sued the Alamance County sheriff, the deputy sheriff, and 10 unidentified deputies for arrest without probable cause. The case stemmed from an alleged human trafficking case in which Azelton, then a detective with the Alamance County Sheriff’s Office, investigated and sought arrest warrants. It was settled in 2023 for $430,000, though the sheriff did not admit fault.
In early 2025, Azelton was a subject of a complaint about falsifying timesheets at the Randolph County Sheriff’s Office; a State Bureau of Investigation case is still open, but Randolph County District Attorney Andy Gregson said the complaint was “a big nothing burger” and there was no intention of fraud.
Azelton did not respond to requests for comment.
Deon Covington, who first worked with Azelton in the 1990s and again a few years ago at the Randolph County jail, said that Azelton is strong-minded, by-the-book, and empathetic, and he questioned whether criticism based on her former role was laden with bias.
“Working for a sheriff is fundamentally political,” Covington said. “Some people can force an opinion because they don’t like a person or they want somebody else to be in that spot.”
Change in Direction
It’s not unprecedented for party officials to try to influence local boards of elections.
Months ahead of the 2016 election, Dallas Woodhouse, then the executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party, emailed sitting GOP boards of elections members and party loyalists across the state outlining a series of policies that he sought to adopt.
Among them: ending same-day registration on Election Day, changing early voting plans to exclude Sundays, striking universities from early voting sites, and limiting the number of early voting sites to one per county.
“Many of our folks are angry and are opposed to Sunday voting for a host of reasons including respect for voter’s religious preferences, protection of our families and allowing the fine election staff a day off,” Woodhouse wrote in his email, which the News & Observer first reported. “Six days of voting in one week is enough. Period.”
The GOP held the majority of the then-three member boards. Following Woodhouse’s memo 23 counties reduced early voting hours, and nine dropped Sunday voting, the News & Observer found.
“There are concerns that there are people that are getting rewarded as a political favor, as opposed to their working knowledge and their experience in elections.”
Jim Womack, president of the North Carolina Election Integrity Team
Still, many active Democrats and Republicans think the parties should not try to influence local elections boards. And appointing chairs who weren’t previously on the county elections boards has raised questions among local Republicans.
In Nash County, the blog Fighting Crime News reported that local GOP members criticized the appointment of John Check, a retired preacher and citizen member of the state Judicial Standards Commission, for a “lack of experience.” Check has twice run unsuccessfully for a state House seat.
In some counties where a board member was appointed chair, the newly appointed chair has been previously enmeshed in controversy.
In Henderson County, the State Board of Elections reprimanded Linda Rebuck for spreading “false and misleading statements” to state lawmakers and advocating for Republicans to win the 2024 elections. Boliek appointed Rebuck as the new Henderson County board chair in June.
In Watauga County, four board members publicly apologized in 2020 after then-board member Eric Eller, who also was appointed chair last month, questioned the constitutional rights of a Black student group at Appalachian State University to protest near a polling place. In Wilson County, the new chair, Republican Pete Hall, was the lone vote against dismissing one-term state Rep. Ken Fontenot’s petition for a complete hand-eye recount.
With Republicans holding the majority in 100 counties, many board members and politicos expect changes.
“I think what you’re going to see is more questioning than what people thought they had the latitude to have in the past,” said Ackiss, the Republican activist. “They’re going to ask questions like, why don’t we have both the Republican and a Democrat judge in that particular precinct? Why do we have volunteer names here and they’re not being used?”
Ackiss said local board members also might provide a secondary check to various voter forms, even if they’ve been screened by staff.
Mark Rodin, a Democratic precinct official who has worked elections in Durham and Wake counties, thinks the new Republican majority will result in fewer polling places on college campuses, an objective Woodhouse cited back in 2016.
‘Dedication to Democracy’
In 2010, the Randolph County Board of Elections sought a new director. Oldham, then chair of the Democratic-majority board, hired a Republican and recalled taking heat from his own party.
“Someone said, ‘Well, they did not hire a Democrat,’” Oldham said about hiring Melissa Kirstner, who is the board’s current director. Oldham, an attorney, saw Kirstner’s qualifications working for the city of Charlotte and the IRS.
“I wasn’t concerned what her politics were,” Oldham said. “I was concerned about somebody who would run an election in the manner that the public trusts.”
That resonates with Kirstner today. At the end of the June meeting, Kirstner, who changed her party registration to unaffiliated after accepting the job, stood up to recognize the board’s five members.
“I’m very, very honored and very proud to have worked with each of you for as long as we have,” Kirstner said. “I feel like we’ve been through a little bit of a battle, maybe not a war, but a battle together over the last year of elections.”
The county’s clays, including red earthenware clay, earned it the home of the North Carolina Pottery Highway, and Kirstner pulled from a box a commemorative red clay plate for each member with their name and years of service on the back.
At the end of the meeting, Megerian thanked her fellow members of both parties who will not be coming back.
“We have always put the needs of the community before our own personal agendas and whatever other outside pressures we may have,” Megerian said. “I really, really appreciate your dedication to democracy, and it’s been a privilege to serve with you guys.”
Update: This article has been updated with a comment from Jim Womack, president of the North Carolina Election Integrity Team.
Ren Larson is a staff reporter at The Assembly. She previously worked for The Texas Tribune and ProPublica’s investigative team, and as a data reporter with The Arizona Republic. She holds a master’s of public policy and an M.A. in international and area studies from the University of California, Berkeley.