Wake County Democrats want to bring back NC State early voting site

Wake County Democrats are asking the county commissioners to spend an extra $200,000 to save a longtime early voting site on the campus of N.C. State University, after the county’s new Republican-majority elections board voted in June to stop using the site.

College students and employees tend to lean Democratic, and Republican-controlled election boards across the state have recently blocked some plans to have on-campus early voting options. The new Wake County early voting plan ends early voting in the heart of campus at the Talley Student Union, instead moving the site to a separate part of campus that is farther from where most students and faculty congregate.

The Wake commissioners met Monday and, in the public comment section prior to their meeting, Wake County Democratic Party chair Wesley Knott took the dias to tell them he had just submitted a petition with 60,000 signatures asking for the money.

Knott delivered the request Monday, telling the Wake County commissioners they were “an oasis of democratic process in a state that is increasingly authoritarian.”

Asking for this extra funding doesn’t come lightly, he added. “I know that residents are facing real challenges, and I know that there are lots of competing priorities across the county that you are working to mitigate,” he said.

It’s unclear whether the site would be brought back even if the county commissioners agreed to pay extra to staff and supply it this November. That decision is ultimately up to the elections board, not the county commissioners.

Elections officials are now overseen by Republican State Auditor Dave Boliek. His office took over elections administration in North Carolina last year after the GOP-led legislature stripped that power from Democratic Gov. Josh Stein.

A spokesperson for  Boliek, Randy Brechbiel, said Monday that Boliek "supports common-sense, efficiency-driven election decisions that give voters equal access."

Since control of elections switched parties, new Republican majorities on county election boards have also voted to shut down former early voting sites, or to deny requests for new ones, on campus at Western Carolina University, N.C. A&T University, UNC-Greensboro and Elon University in addition to the N.C. State plan.

Brechbiel said that despite those actions, the state still has more on-campus early voting sites than in the last midterm election cycle in 2022.