Jackson Board of Elections votes to close Western Carolina University early voting site
Jackson County Board of Elections members (left to right) Jay Pavey, Roy Osborn, Bill Thompson, Wes Hanemayer and Betsy Swift listen to public comment during the Dec. 9 meeting.
Cory Vaillancourt photo
The seemingly indiscriminate closure of an early voting site at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee prior to the March 3, 2026, Primary Election by the Republican-majority Jackson County Board of Elections has students of all political stripes up in arms and the university’s chancellor refusing to speak out on what critics of the proposal are calling voter suppression.
“It certainly feels that way,” said Zach Powell, president of WCU’s college Democrats. “I know that some board members have sort of painted it as a financial concern for the county, but it does feel like the votes of students are being targeted.”
That the site is threatened at all is a direct consequence of actions the Republican-led General Assembly took in the wake of disgraced Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s loss to then-Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat, in the Nov. 7, 2024, gubernatorial contest.
Under decades-old law, governors had appointed members to the state and county elections boards.
On Dec. 11, 2024, tucked away in a disaster relief bill, Republican legislators reassigned those powers to one of the Council of State offices they did manage to win — state auditor.
The bill passed both chambers of the General Assembly in less than 24 hours but was vetoed by then-Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat. Legislators voted to override Cooper’s veto, and on June 25, all county elections boards instantly changed from 3-2 Democrat majorities to 3-2 Republican majorities. The state-level board experienced similar metamorphosis.
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First reported by the Sylva Herald, the idea of closing the WCU early voting site came up without prior notice shortly before the Nov. 18 Jackson County Board of Elections meeting began; in a document obtained by The Smoky Mountain News, Republican Chair Bill Thompson presented an analysis of early voting sites that said it was “a waste of taxpayer’s [sic] money” to operate two early voting sites less than five miles apart and that Jackson County could save up to $20,000 by closing any one of the five sites.
Based on data from the 2024 Primary Election, eliminating the WCU early voting site would make it harder for students, faculty and staff to vote — but would have a disproportionate impact on those who have historically supported Democratic candidates.
During the 2024 Primary Election, 345 people pulled Democratic presidential preference ballots at the WCU early voting location, making it the third-busiest early voting site for Democrats of the five early voting sites. More Dem votes were cast at WCU during early voting than in any Election Day precinct — even though Dem turnout was likely down due to President Joe Biden’s lack of Primary Election opposition that year.
Conversely, during that same election, just 182 people at WCU pulled Republican presidential preference ballots, despite more than half a dozen Republicans — including Donald Trump — appearing on the ballot. The meager GOP total made WCU the fourth-busiest early voting site for Republicans out of five early voting sites and the 10th-most popular site or method of voting out of the 20 precincts and early voting sites offered by the county. Nikki Haley, former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador, won GOP early voting at WCU, defeating Trump 86 to 81.
All told, the WCU early voting location was one of the most popular ways for Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans to vote that year, but it was only of average popularity for Republicans in general.
Of all ballots cast for Democrats and Republicans at the five early voting sites in the 2024 Primary Election, WCU’s 527 was fourth-lowest. The lowest, 270, came in at the Cherokee early voting site in Whittier. However, more Republicans showed up there than at WCU.
An analysis by WCU political science professor Chris Cooper shows that during the 2024 Primary Election, “the average age of the people who voted at the WCU campus was the youngest of any early voting site in the state” and that upon the site’s establishment in 2016, the percentage of votes from 18-to 25-year-olds initially tripled or quadrupled before settling into roughly double prior levels of around 3%. More than 76,000 people have voted at the site since its inception.
During the 2024 General Election, nearly 3,000 people — more than one in seven of all voters that year — utilized the WCU polling site, according to Evie Grey Corn, vice president of the Student Democracy Coalition.
A nonpartisan student group focused on civic education, civil dialogue and increasing student participation in elections and governance, the SDC trains its members to maintain strict neutrality in all public-facing activities, researching issues students care about, hosting civil dialogues in high-traffic areas on campus and preparing fact sheets so students can ask questions with confidence that the answers will be grounded in law and process, rather than ideology.
Corn grew up in Hendersonville and came to WCU to study forensic anthropology, drawn by the familiarity of the region and the feeling that Cullowhee would become her new home. She registered as an unaffiliated voter in Jackson County as soon as she moved onto campus four years ago, has lived in Jackson County year-round during her studies, works in Jackson County, pays federal and state taxes in Jackson County and has only ever voted in Jackson County.
Easy access to an early voting site in the same building where she works on campus, Corn said, allowed her to vote without sacrificing classes, labs or shifts; her schedule is packed with long hours in STEM courses, hours-long labs and work shifts that leave little room for travel to an off-campus polling place.
“Oh gosh, it maybe took me like five minutes,” she said of her most recent early voting experience on campus. “It’s as simple as having to run down to the coffee shop and get your coffee.”
She’s also concerned that if the location is closed during the Primary Election, the board will make the case to close the site during the 2026 General Election as well.
Without the on-campus site, Corn worries that thousands of students who don’t have cars will face barriers to voting that cannot easily be overcome. The Cullowhee early voting site, located at Cullowhee Parks and Recreation building, is a mile walk from campus — down a road that isn’t meant to be walked and at a site not served by public transportation. She said very few students even know where the recreation center is.
“It’s back past the elementary school,” she said. “There is no crosswalk, there are no sidewalks. You would just have to be walking on the side of the road, in the grass or in the ditch for 30 minutes. My biggest fear — it’s horrible to think about — is that there is going to be that student that is determined to vote, that will not stop anything and that will cross the road where there is no crosswalk and get hit by a car.”
Corn said a petition against closing the site put forth by the SDC has drawn hundreds of signatures from students of every political background.
Like Corn, Powell registered to vote in Jackson County almost as soon as he got there. A Rutherford County native and political science major, Powell lives in Jackson County year-round, has worked in Jackson County and pays federal and state taxes in Jackson County.
“I think that the Republican majority board are privy to the fact that college students tend to vote Democratic, so eliminating the site that students are able to access the easiest would definitely cut down on the number of Democratic votes in the county,” he said. “You don’t see the board attempting to close [the Cherokee] site, because people would call it out as an attempt to disenfranchise native voters.”
Powell rattled off a string of statistics that provide further insight into how closing the site would suppress not only voting but also the ability to vote — the WCU polling site accounted for 77% of same-day registrations during the 2024 Primary Election and 64% during the General Election. One out of every five votes cast at the site, he said, was cast by someone who registered that same day.
He also expressed concerns about the Cullowhee site’s ability to absorb hundreds or thousands of new voters and that staffing the site to handle the influx would cut into the purported savings that would be realized by closing the WCU site.
“At the end of the day, I’m not sure how much money is really being saved if you’re going to need to hire additional poll workers at Cullowhee Rec to handle this influx of voters to process same-day registrations,” Powell said.
The county’s most recent budget, about $107 million, includes a substantial property tax increase that doesn’t even account for the estimated $500,000 cost for the county to withdraw from the Fontana Regional Library system next year.
Both Corn and Powell felt heartened by the support they say they’ve received from fellow students, but at least one of them is disappointed in the lack of institutional support from the university. Chancellor Kelli Brown declined an interview request from The Smoky Mountain News.
“I would like to see the administration and the chancellor come out in stronger support of the polling site,” Powell said. “I think the chancellor probably wants to stay away from anything that could be perceived a political topic. It would be nice to see some stronger support for general civic engagement and access to the ballot for WCU students from the chancellor.”
Jackson County isn’t the first instance of Republican-led boards of elections trying to make it harder for North Carolinians to vote.
According to reporting from Tricia Shapiro’s NC News Digest, Madison County’s Republican-led Board of Elections “voted without public notice or comment to eliminate two of the county’s three early voting sites” in October.
In November, the Republican-led Guilford County Board of Elections voted to move forward with 11 early voting sites, but without polls at the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University — which is 83% Black — and at UNC-Greensboro. An estimated 14,000 students utilized the sites in the 2025 municipal election.
Because neither of the votes in those two cases was unanimous, the majority’s plan, along with the minority’s plan, will be submitted to the Republican-led State Board of Elections, which will vote to approve, modify or replace the plans.
According to draft minutes from the Nov. 18 Jackson Board of Elections meeting, Thompson’s surprise attempt to close the WCU site was tabled after the board’s Democrats, Roy Osborn and Betsy Swift, offered a motion to table it pending site visits. They were joined by two Republican board members, Jay Pavey and Wes Hanemayer, in tabling the item. Thompson voted no.
Cooper was first to speak at the Dec. 9 meeting, in front of an audience of about 40 people. Cooper didn’t explicitly argue for or against the site; however, the statistics he restated from his published analysis made clear that the intent of the decision and the impact of the decision would be quite different.
Chris Cooper, the Robert Lee Madison distinguished professor and director of the Haire Institute for Public Policy at Western Carolina University, testifies to the impact of closing an early voting site on campus during a Dec. 9 meeting of the Jackson County Board of Elections. Cory Vaillancourt photo
Two other administrators from WCU — but not Brown — followed Cooper’s lead by explaining the setup and amenities at the site.
Student Karl Firm read a nonpartisan statement from the SDC opposing the move; after the meeting concluded, Firm told SMN that the statement was intended to be a joint statement including the college Democrats and college Republicans; however, when the SDC couldn’t get the Republicans to sign on, they could no longer allow the Democrats to do so — in the interest of maintaining balance.
Powell previously told SMN the college Democrats had signed the statement.
Of the 22 speakers, only one, David Parker, explicitly recommended closing the WCU site, saying that based on comparisons with Buncombe County, Jackson County actually offered too many early voting sites.
Another speaker, Tom Howard, began talking before he even reached the podium, saying essentially that he’d planned to support the closing of the site but after hearing from Cooper and others before him, he’d changed his mind. A woman in the audience told him, “It’s OK to change your opinion.” Howard responded, prompting substantial applause from the crowd.
“I can do whatever I want, I’m an American!” he said.
John Herrera, a Democratic candidate for the Jackson County commission in the 2026 election, poked holes in the cost-savings argument advanced by Thompson.
“One voter disenfranchised or discouraged is too much,” Herrera said. “The WCU polling place is an investment, and a dollar well spent.”
Green’s Creek Township resident Steve Kuehl mentioned that he’d walked “miles” on campus when he was in college and that absentee voting was always an option for students — plus, Kuehl said, he’d just seen a 30% increase in his property tax bill thanks to the Republican-led county commission passing a budget with substantial hikes in June.
“My years in the corporate world, when we had to raise funds, we either went out and sold bonds or we began austerity programs, we started looking, where can we trim costs? I ask you to consider this,” Kuehl said, without explicitly calling for the closure.
Catherine MacCallum, chair of WCU’s staff senate, reminded the board that closing the site would require more hours, more staffing and more money spent by taxpayers to accommodate voters at another site, while a subsequent speaker, Paul Dispenza, joked that if the board was really looking to save money, they should just close all the early voting sites.
The final speaker was Tom Downing, who became known for his fiery criticism of commissioners during last summer’s library debate. His comments to the Board of Elections were equally passionate.
“The truth is, there won’t be any money saved because, as you’ve heard today and from an expert in elections — Dr. Cooper — you’ll need more staff at the remaining Cullowhee voting site, especially on Election Day, because people will not have voted early on campus,” Downing said.
Downing then launched into broad criticism of Republican leadership in the General Assembly, which hasn’t passed a state budget but found time to gerrymander another congressional seat.
“So don’t talk to me about fiscal responsibility, sir! I think any reasonable person would conclude that the Republican Party wants to stop WCU students and faculty and staff from registering to vote on campus!” Downing yelled. “Why am I angry? This is a blatant example of election interference and voter suppression!”
After public comment, the two sides presented proposed plans for early voting. Roy Osborn, in conjunction with fellow Democrat Betsy Swift, presented a plan that would leave things basically as they are — with the WCU early voting site intact.
Thompson, however, presented his plan for closing the site but in doing so made several misrepresentations of the physical space where the WCU polling place would be located, calling it “inaccessible.”
He noted the length of the walk to the polling site from the parking lot but ignored assurances from WCU administrators that a parking lot at the Health and Human Sciences building would be reserved only for voters and would eliminate the need for voters to climb a tall set of stairs.
Thompson’s motion to accept the closure was seconded by fellow Republican Jay Pavey. Pavey, a local attorney, is best known for representing a Waynesville pastor involved in another election-related controversy — in 2005, Chan Chandler resigned as pastor at East Waynesville Baptist Church after allegedly “running off” nine congregants who did not support then-President George W. Bush.
Thompson and Pavey were joined by the board’s third Republican, Wes Hanemayer of Cashiers, who offered no comment on his yes vote. Osborn and Swift voted no.
Because the measure was not passed unanimously, the two plans will now go to the Republican-majority State Board of Elections for a hearing. Jackson County Board of Elections Director Amanda Allen said the deadline to submit the proposals is Dec. 19; however, the NCSBE is encouraging counties to submit as early as possible.
It’s unclear if the state board’s final decision could wind up before a judge. As of Dec. 9, there are 68 days until the Primary Election and 85 days until Election Day.
