Dallas Woodhouse, former NCGOP boss, resigns from role in auditor’s office

A North Carolina Republican operative who was hired to be a liaison between State Auditor Dave Boliek and elections boards across the state resigned from the auditor’s office Monday.

The move comes just days after Boliek reassigned Dallas Woodhouse — and after some of the state’s top officials traded barbs over Woodhouse’s influence on local elections. 

A spokesman for Boliek informed WRAL of Woodhouse’s decision. Woodhouse, who became a program manager after the reassignment, provided his resignation letter to WRAL without providing further comment.

“I believe the need for a dedicated Elections Liaison has naturally come to an end,” Woodhouse said in his letter. “Accordingly, I believe this is the appropriate time for me to move forward and return to the public policy, communications, and advocacy work that has defined much of my career.”

The resignation is the latest development in a political shift over the state’s elections oversight.

Republican state lawmakers stripped responsibility for overseeing state and county election boards from Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, in 2024 and gave the power to Boliek, a Republican. Boliek hired Woodhouse, a former executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party, to help shape county election boards and early voting plans.

Under Boliek, the state board of elections and all 100 county election boards have switched to GOP majorities, and after Woodhouse was hired, some counties enacted longtime Republican priorities such as eliminating some early voting options on Sundays — a popular day with Black voters and on college campuses. Black voters and students tend to vote Democratic. 

Woodhouse had served in the role since September. According to reporting from WLOS and NC Local, Woodhouse and Boliek were involved in efforts to ensure the new Jackson County Board of Elections would shut down a polling place on campus at Western Carolina University. In the Triangle, the Wake County Board of Elections also recently voted to eliminate a longtime early voting site at N.C. State’s student union, and to move it to a remote part of campus, WRAL previously reported.

Last week, amid scrutiny of those moves, Boliek reassigned Woodhouse to a position focusing on constituent services and communications.

Boliek’s office said last week that Woodhouse’s liaison position was never meant to be permanent. Woodhouse echoed that in his resignation letter. 

“I leave this position believing the mission we were asked to accomplish has been successful,” Woodhouse said. “Our 100 County [board of elections] chairs that were appointed just a year ago are now well equipped to conduct a fair, accurate, transparent election this fall, where voters have unprecedented opportunities to vote at a time and matter of the voters' choosing.”

Stein said Thursday on social media that Boliek’s reassignment of Woodhouse was “too little too late” and that “administration of our elections should have been free from partisan influence from the beginning and should remain so.”

“Every lawful voter deserves to have his or her voice heard,” Stein said. “Yet under Auditor Boliek’s watch, the State Board of Elections has been directing counties to eliminate Sunday voting and remove early voting from college campuses, including the country's largest HBCU. It’s cynical politics, and it’s wrong.”  

Boliek’s office declined to comment on Stein’s allegations.

Francis X. DeLuca, the chairman of the elections board, told Stein in a letter on Friday that the state board hasn’t been directing counties to eliminate Sunday voting. To suggest that the state board had a hand in influencing early voting plans, DeLuca said in his letter, “is unfair to the dedicated public servants across North Carolina who work long hours, often under intense public scrutiny, to ensure every eligible voter has the opportunity to cast a ballot and have that ballot counted accurately.”

State and county elections officials are ramping up preparations for the 2026 midterm elections. Mail-in ballots will go out in September, early voting starts in October and election day is Nov. 3. Selecting early voting sites is “among the most difficult responsibilities entrusted to local election officials,” Woodhouse wrote in his resignation letter.

“Every county presents different geography, population growth, transportation challenges, budgets, available public buildings, and community expectations. There is rarely a perfect answer, and reasonable people frequently reach different conclusions,” Woodhouse said in his letter. 

He continued: “I am certain that my advice was not always correct. Looking back, there are recommendations I might make differently today. I certainly would have been more precise in my communications at times. But every recommendation I offered was made honestly, thoughtfully, and with integrity.”

At the county and state levels, elections are overseen by five-member boards consisting of three Republicans and two Democrats tasked with setting election rules, investigating campaign finance violations, auditing allegations of fraud or deciding whether to certify results. Boliek said he hired Woodhouse to be his “eyes and ears” on the ground during elections.

Woodhouse, who led the NCGOP from 2015 to 2019, most recently worked as the North Carolina director for the group American Majority. That group explicitly describes its goal: to help Republicans and hurt Democrats in elections.

In his resignation letter to Boliek, Woodhouse said he encountered “enthusiastic disagreements over policy, law, and politics” while working as Boliek’s liaison. However, Woodhouse said, he found election officials to be working toward the same objective: “conducting elections that North Carolinians can trust.” 

“Republicans, Democrats, and unaffiliated members alike demonstrated a sincere commitment to making an already strong election system even better, while managing the difficulties of limited resources, changing voting habits, and changes in residential housing patterns,” Woodhouse said. “While they often differed on how best to accomplish that goal, I never doubted their desire to serve voters fairly, professionally, and with integrity.”