The State Board of Elections must be and seem nonpartisan
For citizens to be confident that election results are accurate, a necessary precondition is that they believe election officials are administering them impartially.
In other words, to flip North Carolina’s state motto somewhat, officials at the North Carolina State Board of Elections (SBE) must not only be impartial, they must also seem impartial. Anything less undermines confidence that our elections are free and fair. That, in turn, undermines faith in all our government institutions.
Let’s begin by pointing out the obvious: Getting political is nothing new at the SBE.
The SBE’s board comprises five members, three from the party of the appointing authority and two from the other major party. While that appointing authority resided with the governor over the past century, the General Assembly reassigned it to the state auditor after the 2024 election.
Officially, the SBE executive director (the state’s chief election administration officer) is a nonpartisan position appointed by the board, but there is little doubt that politics plays a role in the selection process. It is hardly an accident that, whenever the power to appoint the majority of the SBE’s board changes hands between parties, the executive director is replaced and board policies shift.
Since we are in a republic, some political influence over election administration may be desirable. Elections should have policy consequences, including those that affect how future elections are conducted. Those influences should not rise to the point where they give the appearance or reality of giving one party an unfair advantage in elections, however.
We have seen outside influences on SBE operations that extend beyond the normal and constitutionally protected lobbying of government agencies.
Under Executive Director Gary Bartlett in the 2010s, the SBE had an uncomfortably close relationship with Bob Hall, a lobbyist and director of the left-wing advocacy group Democracy North Carolina. Bartlett and Hall coordinated lobbying plans that included attacking Republican legislators. The relationship was so close that Hall was even given a role in editing official SBE voter guides.
In 2020, the SBE, under Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell, entered into a collusive lawsuit settlement with Democratic attorney Marc Elias that illegally and unconstitutionally altered North Carolina election laws. Brinson Bell’s conduct led to the General Assembly passing a law in 2021 to make it more difficult for government agencies to enter such collusive settlements.
Despite those problems, election officials had kept their public comments largely free of partisan rancor. When confronted by legislators over the SBE’s settlement with Elias and other conduct during the 2020 election, Brinson Bell kept her rhetoric within the bounds of trying to protect the rights of voters, “regardless of party affiliation.”
That abruptly changed recently. Part of the SBE’s website briefly went down on Nov. 1 during the early voting period before municipal elections. State Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton implied that “inexperienced, partisan appointees” were to blame for the crash and said that “poll workers are having difficulty quickly identifying and registering voters.”
SBE spokesman Patrick Gannon disputed Clayton’s account and said she “is either ignorant or intentionally spreading misinformation.”
However harsh, Gannon’s statement was true: Clayton was either being ignorant or intentionally spreading misinformation. Maintaining the SBE webpage is the responsibility of technical career workers, not appointees. Poll workers use their own poll books, not the SBE webpage, to verify voter information, and election operations were not disrupted.
Nevertheless, the partisan tone of the response is not something we should expect from the people running our elections. A simple statement of the facts, without the attack on Clayton, would have sufficed. Instead of calming tensions, the response further inflamed them.
(In my numerous interactions with Gannon, who has served both Republican and Democratic-led boards of elections since 2016, he has always been professional and guarded in his language. His attack on Clayton strikes me as uncharacteristic.)
Where do we go from here?
Legislation passed as part of a mini-budget in July gives current SBE Executive Director Sam Hayes the authority to replace over a third of the board’s roughly 70 employees. As I wrote earlier in July, that proportion of political appointees in the SBE is excessive. Hayes should exercise his authority judiciously and limit his appointments to senior policy positions. Wholesale replacement of career officials with political appointees would undermine public confidence in the SBE.
Likewise, all those affiliated with the SBE should avoid making statements that a reasonable person could believe to be partisan. Such statements undermine confidence in the impartiality of election officials.
To support voter confidence, election officials must be and seem nonpartisan.
“The State Board of Elections must be and seem nonpartisan” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.
