Donna Elms, chairman of the Dare County Board of Elections, appeared before the Dare County Board of Commissioners at its meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 6, to explain the early voting schedule that the elections board approved late last month and sent on to the state for its approval.
The Board of Elections has been criticized for not adding more hours, especially early morning hours at satellite early voting sites and weekend hours. I was among the critics — I wrote a blog about the board’s early voting decision last month.
Elms noted that the press had written “ad nauseum” about the early voting situation.
This is true. Early voting has gotten a lot of coverage statewide because of a U.S. Court of Appeals decision striking down North Carolina’s new elections law, which included, among other things, requiring voters to have an ID and reducing the time for early voting.
Furthermore, media outlets wrote about a memo to local boards from the state Republican Party chairman recommending ways to restrict early voting — limit Sunday voting, provide fewer voting opportunities and don?t include sites at college campuses.
Elms was at the Board of Commissioners meeting because she had been invited to appear to explain the elections board’s decision.
At their meeting on Aug. 15, the commissioners were asked by spokesmen for two non-partisan groups — the Dare County League of Women Voters and Democracy NC — to consider a resolution to ask the Board of Elections to reconsider its decision on early voting.
The commissioners, instead of passing the resolution asking the elections board to add more hours, voted to invite the chairman to the Sept. 6 meeting — long after it had made a final decision on the county’s early voting schedule and just two days before the state Board of Elections was set to approve all the schedules.
All of the commissioners who were present at the time, five Republicans and one Democrat, voted in favor of the useless gesture of inviting Elms to explain the early voting decision — after the fact.
The only Democrat at the meeting at that point, Warren Judge, made a motion to adopt the resolution asking the elections board to reconsider its decision. It died for lack of a second.
“For those of you who do not know,” Elms told the commissioners on Sept. 6, “board members are recommended by the local political parties, then appointed by the State Board of Elections, so we don?t work for you. Everything we do is mandated in the state statutes.”
Elms emphasized that the board is non-partisan.
“When someone is a newly appointed member of a board of elections and attends their first state training, the first thing they are told is, ‘You are out of politics…You are to work with your board and staff in a non-partisan way.’ I have served on the board since 1998, and we have always been non-partisan in our decisions.”
The decision on early voting was non- partisan, approved by the two Republican members of the elections board — Elms and Carol Warnecki — and Democrat Lynda Midgett.
Elms noted that the early voting schedule the board presented included an increase of 58.5 hours over the hours offered in last March’s primary. In that primary, Dare County was ranked No. 50 out of 100 counties for total early voting hours.
One point Elms noted is that early voting makes it more convenient for those who want to vote, but does not significantly increase voter turnout. In 2012, she said, Dare ranked 80th out of 100 counties with a 64 percent voter turnout.
“That is abysmal,” she said.
On the March 15 primary, she said, the county ranked 43rd out of 100, a significant increase.
“Why?” she asked. “Because every election is different.”
She also said that the board “has never had a complaint conveyed to them about early voting hours.”
“Not one,” she said. “And in the handful of emails the board was handed at the Aug. 12 meeting concerning the expansion of early voting hours, not one person said they were unable to vote because of the voting hours offered. Not one.”
She said the emails the board received asked for “better hours” but that “no one stated that they personally had been inconvenienced or disenfranchised by the hours offered.”
She said that voters who cannot get to a polling place during early voting or on election day, can also choose to mail in an absentee ballot.
“This method of voting,” she said, “is for anyone who may be out of town, or the country, or just can’t make it to the polls during the generous early voting hours offered, or on election day.”
As for Sunday voting, she noted that the “big Sunday voters” are in counties with military bases, college dormitories, and mega churches — none of which fit Dare County.
Commissioner Allen Burrus of Hatteras village, a former member of the Board of Elections, noted that he is a “big supporter of early voting.”
He noted that the non-partisan groups that spoke at Board of Elections meetings — the League of Women Voters and Democracy NC — asked for more hours in the morning at satellite locations.
“I am willing to make a motion,” Burrus said, “if you need that to add more morning hours.”
Elms declined.
“At this point, our plan has been submitted,” she said.
“I’m not knocking the hours you have, just asking if you can have more,” Burrus said. “I would support anything that can give you more hours.”
He offered to make a motion asking for more funds for the board if that’s what it would take.
“We feel we’ve done the best we can and have more hours than we did in the last election,” Elms answered.
“It’s a matter of apathy on the part of the public,” Warnecki added.
The commissioners thanked the Board of Elections for explaining the early voting schedule.
And that was the end of that.
Obviously, the decision on the early voting schedule was non-partisan in Dare County since even the Democrat voted for it.
However, you’ve got to wonder why if people want “better hours,” — for whatever reason — they can’t get them.
What is so difficult about that?
I guess I am just one of those folks who thinks that anything we can do to make voting easier is good.
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