State board rubber-stamps Jackson early voting plan
Opponents of the Jackson County Board of Elections’ move to close the polling site at Western Carolina have leveled allegations of voter suppression.
NCSBE photo
The Republican-led North Carolina State Board of Elections voted 3-2 along party lines to allow the closure of a Democrat-leaning early voting site at Western Carolina University, against overwhelming opposition from the people the closure would affect.
“It’s a war on students,” board member Siobhan O’Duffy Millen, a retired attorney from Raleigh, said shortly after the board voted Jan. 13 to strip early voting sites from historically Black NCA&T University and UNC-Greensboro in Guilford County and shortly before doing the same thing to WCU.
After Republicans lost the 2024 governor’s race in North Carolina, the GOP-controlled General Assembly moved swiftly in a post-election lame-duck session to strip the incoming Democratic governor of key appointment powers over elections administration and transfer them to the Republican state auditor in a bill that was purportedly for Hurricane Helene relief — a move critics described as a retaliatory power grab.
Through changes folded into broader elections and governance legislation, lawmakers removed the governor’s longstanding authority to appoint a majority of members to the State Board of Elections and instead reassigned that power to the auditor, an office that had remained in Republican control.
The shift fundamentally altered the balance of power over election oversight in North Carolina, insulating the board from gubernatorial influence and ensuring continued Republican leverage over election administration despite losing the executive branch, a maneuver Democrats warned at the time undermined democratic norms and voter confidence.
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The Jackson County early voting plan reached the state board after the Republican-led Jackson County Board of Elections voted 3-2 in December to advance a plan that eliminates early voting on the WCU core campus and consolidates Cullowhee early voting at the county’s parks and recreation facility.
Supporters of the WCU site argued that eliminating the site, which has operated continuously since 2016 and has been credited with dramatically increasing participation among younger voters, would significantly reduce meaningful access for a large segment of eligible voters while producing minimal cost savings.
Since its establishment under a Republican governor, a Republican county election board and a Republican state elections board, the WCU early voting site has recorded more than 76,000 ballots cast across five general elections and four primaries. The WCU site votes solidly Democrat.
The majority countered that maintaining two early voting sites less than two miles apart was fiscally irresponsible and unnecessary and closing one would save around $20,000 in the context of a county budget that is well over $100 million.
The Cullowhee precinct is the largest in Jackson County, with more than 6,300 registered voters and two distinct populations: a geographically dispersed, older rural electorate and a densely concentrated, younger and more diverse campus population.
According to materials submitted by Jackson’s Democrat-minority board members, youth participation among Jackson County voters more than doubled compared to statewide rates, and the site consistently produced the highest proportion of same-day registrations in North Carolina. They also argued that same-day registration is one of the most effective tools for increasing youth participation and that the campus site has been uniquely effective in that regard.
Supporting materials submitted by the majority emphasized ease of parking, simpler ingress and egress and clearer electioneering boundaries at the Parks and Recreation facility.
The majority also argued that the existing WCU Health and Human Sciences Building, proposed by minority members as an alternative campus-adjacent site, presents accessibility challenges due to walking distances, stairs and internal navigation.
Minority members disputed those claims and argued that the cost savings cited by the majority are overstated. Their analysis, based on staffing requirements and the high volume of same-day registrations typically handled at the campus site, estimates savings closer to $6,000 rather than $20,000. They also note that both the parks and recreation facility and WCU have offered suitable voting spaces at no cost to the county.
A central point of disagreement concerns transportation and pedestrian access. Minority members contend that the parks and recreation facility is approximately 1.7 miles from the center of campus, lacks public or university-provided transportation and is effectively inaccessible on foot due to the design of U.S. 107, a busy four-lane highway with no sidewalks and narrow shoulders. They estimate that walking from campus to the Parks and Recreation site takes roughly 40 minutes one way and note that approximately 68% of WCU students do not have personal vehicles.
According to materials submitted to the state board, the HHS building offers reserved voter parking within 200 feet of the entrance, curbside voting access, ADA compliance, secure space dedicated to elections and familiarity to the broader community, having hosted public clinics and COVID-19 vaccination events serving thousands of county residents.
Minority members believed that the site resolves every constraint raised by the majority while preserving meaningful access for student voters.
Drive-time analyses included in the record show relatively small differences in average travel times between the majority plan and Minority Plan A, which includes a WCU-adjacent site, across nearly every demographic category.
Minority Plan B, which relocates the campus site to the HHS building without retaining the Parks and Recreation location, shows longer average drive times countywide but preserves direct access for campus voters.
Public input has also featured prominently in the dispute. At the Jackson County Board of Elections meeting in December, 21 speakers addressed the board during public comment with all but two urging the board to retain an early voting site on or near the WCU campus.
Under state law, any non-unanimous county early voting plan must be reviewed and approved by the state board. According to NCSBE materials, 87 counties submitted unanimous plans.
During the hearing, Jackson County Board of Elections Chair Bill Thompson continued to push fiscal responsibility as the primary reason for closing the WCU site but misrepresented the true distance from campus to the Rec Center as six-tenths of a mile.
Betsy Swift, a member of the minority on the Jackson County Board of Elections, rebuffed each of Thompson’s claims and objected to his mischaracterization of the parking situation as well as access for people with disabilities.
“Eliminating this site would not meaningfully reduce costs, but the impact would be significantly reduced access for a predominantly young, rural population,” Swift told the board. “It begs the question; what is the money for, if not to serve the voters of Jackson County?”
Roy Osborn, the other Democrat on the Jackson board, reiterated many of Swift’s points and reemphasized that the proposed savings to Jackson taxpayers was “overstated.”
Jackson County Elections Director Amanda Allen said that although she’d like to think her agency could hold an election anywhere it’s directed to, she still had concerns about the Rec Center’s size.
Francis X. De Luca, former president of the conservative Civitas Institute in Raleigh and Republican Chair of the board, joined Republican board members Stacy Eggers, an attorney from Boone, and Bob Rucho, a former Republican senator from Catawba County, in approving the Jackson Republicans’ plan.
Democrats Millen and Jeff Carmon, a Snow Hill attorney and the board’s only Black member, voted against the closure.
“To the students — sorry,” Carmon said.
“Not to beat a dead horse, but we can see a pattern today, can’t we?” Millen said.
Patrick Gannon, the NCSBE’s public information officer, failed to respond to two email requests from The Smoky Mountain News for comment on the process and the timeline — one on Dec. 22, 2025. and one on Jan. 7 — and did not return a phone call on Jan. 9. A spokesperson who answered the phone said Gannon was indeed still with the agency but offered no other information on why he’d failed to respond.
