How North Carolina Got a Trump-Backed Voting Chief

Donald Trump stood at an arena in downtown Asheville in August, soliciting campaign contributions and promising to cut taxes on tips. It was 83 days until Election Day, and Trump started his rally stumping for a seemingly unlikely candidate.  

“State auditor candidate Dave Boliek,” Trump began. “He said, ‘I’m only in politics for you, sir.’ Where is Dave?” 

Trump’s eyes scanned the crowd until they, and his index finger, landed on a then-56-year-old man with clear-framed glasses. “Dave, if you say that, and if you mean—do you mean that?”

“I mean it!” Boliek yelled back.

Barely three minutes into Trump’s 75-minute rally, Boliek, who previously had never campaigned for statewide office, was rewarded with the top prize in Republican politics in 2024.

“If you mean that, I’m for you all the way—he has my endorsement,” Trump said to a cheering crowd, grinning his biggest smile of the rally. “Thank you, Dave.”

Boliek, who changed his voter registration from Democrat to Republican in 2023, embraced Trump on the campaign trail and won with 49 percent of the vote against incumbent Jessica Holmes.

At a Pasquotank County gathering in April, he aligned himself with Trump on abortion. On an Iredell County radio show in May, he echoed Trump on immigration. At a Craven County barbecue event in October, he donned a red Make America Great Again hat and a Team Trump sticker on his lapel. 

Running for state auditor is inherently partisan. On the ballot, each candidate’s name is followed by his or her party affiliation. But the auditor, who is the state’s top watchdog on the spending of tax dollars, is expected to operate independently. To an unusual degree for an auditor candidate, Boliek campaigned as a partisan, especially compared with four-term state auditor Beth Wood, who was last elected in 2020 and was widely praised for being nonpartisan. 

In supporting Trump, Boliek aligned himself with the man who attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election in multiple ways, including asking Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in a recorded phone call “to find 11,780 votes” and declare Trump the winner. Raffensperger, a Republican, refused. 

Two weeks after Boliek won office, Republicans in the state legislature stripped power from offices held by several Democrats. Among the changes: The auditor, and not the governor, will now appoint the State Board of Elections, which administers state elections and hires the state elections director. The auditor also will appoint the chair of each county board of elections, with the other four appointments split between Democrats and Republicans. 

Boliek says he’ll be fair. 

“It’s really important to leave a party label at the door, particularly in the role of the state auditor,” Boliek told The Assembly in September. “That doesn’t mean that you leave your principles at the door, or your mindset at the door.”

Democrats are challenging in court the move to strip power from the governor, which is the legislature’s sixth attempt in eight years to secure Republican control of the State Board of Elections. 

In December, attorneys for then-Gov. Roy Cooper and incoming Gov. Josh Stein said that Boliek’s only experience for his new role is that he has “demonstrated fealty” to the Republican heads of the state legislature. 

Cooper said North Carolina had the same structure for its state elections board for nearly a century and it had served the state well. 

“These blatantly partisan efforts to give control over elections boards to a newly elected Republican will create distrust in our elections process and serve no legitimate purpose,” he said. 

Office of Election Integrity

Moving election administration to the auditor’s office wasn’t Republicans’ first choice, according to Secretary of State Elaine Marshall, a Democrat. 

In June 2024, Marshall stood in front of a room of Democrats gathered to watch Trump and then-President Joe Biden debate. Marshall, 79, became the first woman elected to the Council of State in 1996, and has won re-election every election cycle since.

“I’ve got a target on my back,” Marshall said to the crowd. “My opponent has struck upon an idea that is very attractive to the MAGA crew. He believes if a Republican goes into the secretary of state’s office, a willing General Assembly will put the board of elections there, and that is bad, bad, bad.”

For decades, the governor has appointed new members to the bipartisan board, and those members selected the agency’s director. That’s different from most states, where the secretary of state oversees elections. 

When Marshall won another term as secretary of state in November, legislative Republicans moved the board into the Office of the State Auditor, which Boliek had just flipped from Democrat to Republican. 

The change alarmed Democratic state Rep. Marcia Morey of Durham, who said that Democrats, along with some of her Republican colleagues, didn’t receive the bill until an hour before they voted. 

“It’s just another piece of the puzzle that they’re trying to put together to control all aspects of registration and voting to restrict access to voting,” Morey, a retired district court chief judge, said. 

Former Republican state Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr, a co-leader of the North Carolina Network for Fair, Safe, and Secure Elections and who is now an unaffiliated voter, said the legislature should have had a “candid, bipartisan discussion” and should have sought to remove partisanship from the board.

“It is obviously a purely partisan move to try to shift the majority on not only the state board, but all the local boards from a 3-2 Democrat majority to a 3-2 Republican board,” Orr said. “People advocating for a less partisan makeup of the state board is a valid concern—this change doesn’t do that.”

North Carolina will be the first and only state where elections oversight is within the state auditor’s office.

That makes sense to Jim Womack, the president of North Carolina’s Election Integrity Team, a nonprofit with more than 2,000 volunteers in at least 70 counties. They observe polls, challenge voters—including based on Hispanic-sounding last names, according to Womack—and push state legislators for new laws, like ending same-day voter registration. 

Womack said his organization has “a tight relationship” with the national Election Integrity Network, a similar group run by Cleta Mitchell, an elections attorney and activist who has advised Trump. Mitchell, who is registered to vote in Moore County and is a former Oklahoma state legislator, was on the phone call when Trump asked the Georgia secretary of state to find him votes. 

While Womack said housing the board in the secretary of state’s office is preferred, “If you had to put it under [another] agency where there could be some oversight over what they do, I would think the auditor’s office makes a lot of sense.”

He added, “We think [Boliek] is going to be a dandy.” 

Boliek told The News & Observer that he didn’t seek election appointment responsibilities. But while campaigning, he said that if elected auditor he would make scrutinizing elections a top priority. He noted that the office had not audited the State Board of Elections since 2011, when the office completed a financial audit and a narrowly tailored investigative audit.   

Swaying slightly as his eyes scanned the largely female crowd gathered in Perquimans County by several Republican women’s organizations, Boliek leaned into his vision.

“I believe that the State Auditor’s Office is uniquely situated to house an Office of Election Integrity,” he said in July, as applause took over the room and a loud “Yes!” rang out from a woman seated in a burgundy banquet chair at the Albemarle Plantation meeting room. 

(Boliek did not respond to recent questions from The Assembly about the cost for this office or how many employees it would need.) 

In retrospect, Boliek seemed to be auditioning on the campaign trail for his future role with elections. 

“Are we running elections the same here in Perquimans County?” Boliek said, his left palm open to the sky. “Are we running the same all over in Dare County, in Pasquotank County, as they are in Mecklenburg, Durham, and Buncombe County?”

Boliek said he would conduct an audit to ensure that election administration is consistent across the state. He also called to audit the source code for the state’s ballot-counting machines; to make sure votes are counted and accepted correctly; and to “scrub” the voter rolls to make sure that “people are proper” and the same person is not registered in multiple counties.

The voters in attendance indicated that they supported hiring a new elections director; auditing the code for the tabulators, which are the machines that count the ballots; and adding more safeguards to keep noncitizens—particularly undocumented immigrants—from voting. 

Voter fraud is rare, but it does happen. A federal investigation found that of more than 4.5 million votes cast in North Carolina in the 2016 presidential election, 38 were by noncitizens. In 2018, Bladen County political operative McCrae Dowless illegally gathered and filled out absentee ballots for Republican Mark Harris’ congressional campaign; the State Board of Elections ordered a new election.  

Boliek told WRAL in December that it’s unfair to assume that elections under his watch will be any more partisan than they have been under Cooper’s administration.

He wouldn’t directly answer whether a Republican-majority board that he would appoint would agree with Republican state Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin’s challenge of more than 60,000 voters who presented a state ID to vote but whose registration was missing their driver’s license or Social Security number.

“I think you have to look at it through the lens of what is going to give the public the most confidence in the way the election is run, and in the way the electoral process is administered,” Boliek said.

A spokesman for Boliek told The Assembly that Boliek will manage the State Board of Elections with “integrity, accuracy, and efficiency” and will work “to build public trust and confidence in North Carolina’s elections.” The spokesman said Cooper was “an overt partisan.”

‘A Lack of Understanding’

Boliek’s priorities confuse Karen Brinson Bell, the executive director of the State Board of Elections since 2019. 

“There’s a lack of understanding by him and by others,” Bell said. Her office has audited its tabulation systems after every election since 2006, she said, one of the first in the nation to do so. Her office also publicly tests tabulators before and after the election.

Bell, Boliek, and Womack agree that if voters don’t have confidence in a system, they won’t use it. But while questions about fraud have grown louder in recent years, Bell says the record high turnouts in the 2020 and 2024 elections demonstrate voters still have confidence.

“How we register voters, how we process absentee-by-mail ballots, the check-in of any voter in North Carolina, that is consistently done no matter the size of the county,” Bell said. “The difference is that county election offices are funded by county appropriation, so the ability for Tyrrell County to have a wait-time tool that Wake County is able to have—or the social media presence—those things aren’t equally funded.”

The state allows each county board to choose from three nationally certified voter tabulation systems. Bell said that each of these vendors holds a $17 million bond, essentially an insurance policy, that would pay for a new election if their equipment is responsible for any error. 

Cleaning the voter roll is an ongoing process that is controlled by federal and state law. Generally, voters can’t be removed unless they haven’t voted or confirmed their address in four consecutive federal elections, died, had a felony conviction, or asked to be removed.  

“All of these safeguards are in place. They’re just not sexy talking points; they’re not sound bites,” said Bell, a registered Democrat. “The complexity of what we do does not offer itself to stump speeches. And I’m not a politician.”

Of the four executive directors in the agency’s history, Bell is the only one who previously served as a county elections director. From 2011 to 2015, she was the top elections administrator for Transylvania County, a mostly Republican area where she was selected unanimously by the board. While her term expires in May, Bell said no one has discussed with her whether she will be reappointed. 

If courts don’t reject the state auditor’s new powers, Bell is almost certain to be replaced. Boliek criticized Bell in July, stating that she “shields the public from being able to view the internal audits.” Bell said pre-election testing and postelection audits are open to the public.

The state board initially approved Bell’s hiring in 2019 on a 3-2 vote along party lines. The board split again on Bell in 2021 but unanimously reappointed her in 2023. Orr, the former judge, said, “She’s done an exceptional job. She’s one of the national stars when it comes to running elections.”

Republicans criticized Democrats for removing Kim Strach, the previous elections director. They called the move partisan and questioned the board’s independence from the governor. Strach, who was appointed by a Republican-majority board, is unaffiliated; her husband, a Republican election lawyer, is a go-to hire for the GOP.

Strach rose through the ranks as an investigator before becoming executive director. Those investigations found criminal wrongdoing by former House Speaker Jim Black, Agriculture Commissioner Meg Scott Phipps, and Gov. Mike Easley, all Democrats. When Strach was director, the agency investigated the 2018 Bladen County case, one of the nation’s largest recent cases of voter fraud. 

“So why did Strach get shown the door?” wrote The Charlotte Observer’s editorial board. “It’s because she is not a Democrat and the Board of Elections is majority Democrat. It’s legal. It’s happened before. And it’s wrong.”

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Bell was criticized from the right. With more than 1.3 million voters requesting absentee ballots for the 2020 election, and the federal postal system facing delivery delays, the state board extended the window to receive mail-in ballots from three days after the election to nine days. The board set up drop boxes for absentee ballots and eliminated the witness signature requirement.

The rule changes, part of a settlement, were unanimously supported by the five-member board in a closed session, but they undermined a bipartisan state law passed in the wake of the 2018 Bladen County case to limit the risk of ballot harvesting. When word got out, the two Republicans on the board came under attack by their own party and resigned the next day at the party’s request.

Republican state Senate leader Phil Berger, who was a party in multiple cases involved in the settlements, alleged that the changes made by the board “provide nine full days of uncertainty and opportunity for gamesmanship.”

Eight Years, Six Tries 

The Republican battle to control the State Board of Elections dates to 2016 when the party lost the governor’s office.

In the waning days of a lame-duck session, Republicans in the state legislature passed a bill to expand the board to eight members and divide appointments between the governor and the top members of the state legislature. 

After a Wake County court ruled this violated the state constitution’s separation of powers clause and the case proceeded through higher courts, Republican legislators tried again to reconfigure the board in the party’s favor. It gave the governor all eight appointments, evenly split by party. 

“That made absolutely no sense, other than the fact that it would consistently throw controversial topics back to the legislature to decide, which was the intent of it all along,” Orr said. 

Amid deadlock, the legislature tried a new approach. The board’s members selected a ninth member, an unaffiliated voter.  

In January 2018, the state Supreme Court ruled that the state legislature’s transfer of appointment powers from the executive branch to the legislature was unconstitutional.

Yet again Republican legislators struck back, passing a bill in June 2018 to allow voters to decide whether to amend the constitution and allow the legislature to make all eight appointments. Voters rejected it. 

Like déjà vu, Republicans in the legislature again stripped the governor of appointment powers in 2023 and expanded the board to eight members appointed by the legislature. This time, four votes went to legislative leaders of each party. A three-judge panel blocked the change, granting an injunction. (The case is still in superior court.)

Marshall, the secretary of state, previously pushed back on the idea of placing the board in her office. 

“I have held the principled belief that it is very difficult for the public to totally believe we’re doing our best efforts for fair and impartial election administration when a person who is elected and aligned with a party is the person in charge,” she said.

Switching Sides

Boliek’s campaign for auditor wasn’t the first time he’s sought state office. In 2009, influential state Sen. Tony Rand, a Fayetteville Democrat, announced he would step down. Boliek, who was then a Democrat, threw his name in the hat for then-Gov. Bev Perdue’s appointment. 

Perdue appointed Margaret Dickson, then a four-term member of the state House who was the choice of local Democrats, to the state Senate. 

“[Boliek] wrote me a check for $1,000, which is still a good sum for today, but in 2010, that was a generous individual contribution,” Dickson told The Assembly. “Then the next thing I know he had become one of the guys for the opposing team. He just switched over.” 

In 2010, Dickson lost to Republican Wesley Meredith, a former Fayetteville City Council member. That was the year the Tea Party helped the GOP take control of the House and Senate, federally and in North Carolina.

When Meredith ran for re-election in 2014, Boliek contributed $6,000 to his campaign. Boliek’s GOP contributions took off in 2019 when he was appointed to the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees, aligning himself with Republicans and their policies, and soon became chairman.

He’s contributed $13,900 to the campaigns of U.S. Rep. Tim Moore, the former state House speaker; $13,500 to Meredith; $4,800 to Berger’s campaign committee; and $2,500 to current House Speaker Destin Hall.

Three weeks after Boliek received Trump’s endorsement, he sat across from Republican state Sen. Vickie Sawyer at a Statesville radio station. Sawyer excitedly asked Boliek whether he would carry on former auditor Wood’s tradition to “bust your chops, whether you’re Republican, Democrat, or Independent, or if you weren’t doing the right thing.”

“We’re going to try to carry on that tradition. We also want to work with the legislature,” Boliek responded, saying that he and other Council of State members should work with the Republican majority on policies that support the state’s economy. 

Since winning, Boliek has hired Brent Woodcox, Berger’s former senior policy advisor active on elections and redistricting, and Randy Brechbiel, one of Berger’s former communications advisors. He also has hired David Foxx, a former legislative assistant to Republican state Sen. Benton Sawrey, and Kirk O’Steen, who worked for GOP state Rep. Stephen Ross and was a political director for the N.C. House Republican caucus.

“You can imagine that Dave is not going to do anything that’s going to upset Sen. Berger,” Womack said. 

That’s what Democrats and fair elections experts fear. 

“Who’s going to audit the auditor over election administration?” Morey said. “If there are problems, who’s gonna be the watchdog—since you’re the auditor anyway? I do think there’s an inherent conflict there.” 

Four weeks after winning election, Boliek grabbed a microphone and spoke to a GOP group gathered in Cary. 

“I pledge to be that guy that stands between Josh Stein, Jeff Jackson, and Rachel Hunt doing what they want to do without answering to accountability,” Boliek said of the new governor, attorney general, and lieutenant governor, respectively. “That will be my job as your state auditor. I pledge to do that each and every day.”

He didn’t name any Republicans. 

Jeffrey Billman contributed reporting. 

Disclosure: Margaret Dickson is a board member at CityView News Fund, a 501(c)(3) that supports the work of CityView, a member of The Assembly’s local newsroom network based in Fayetteville.

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.