Feds to monitor elections in Mecklenburg, 4 other NC counties for possible violations
The U.S. Justice Department will monitor elections in Mecklenburg and four other N.C. counties on Tuesday for possible violations of federal voting law — even as state election officials announced an investigation into more than a dozen recent disturbances at polling sites.
Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the State Board of Elections, said the board is looking into 15 disturbances or confrontations at N.C. voting places to decide whether any should be forwarded to local prosecutors or the Justice Department for further investigation.
One report from Columbus County, west of Wilmington, alleges that a worker at a polling site was followed from the site to the local elections office and then to the worker’s home.
In another case, people outside of a county elections office started filming workers as they brought materials from a one-stop voting site, Bell said. The filming, in some instances, included the workers’ license plates.
”None of this is OK,” Bell said. “We want civility. We want people to be able to cast their ballot without fear of intimidation or interference. We ask that the campaigners be respectful and get their message out without intimidating voters or intimidating other candidates or campaigners.
Columbus County is among the N.C. counties to be federally monitored on Tuesday.
The others: Alamance County between Greensboro and Durham; Harnett County north of Fort Bragg, and Wayne County/Goldsboro, east of Raleigh.
All, according to Bell, have seen instances of voter intimidation or interference in the past. Some, such as Columbus County, are tied to the new claims the state will investigate.
“We see this as a positive,” Bell said of the federal monitoring. “It’s ensuring that the voters are able to exercise their right to vote, and it will not change how we conduct ourselves. If anything it’s potentially another level of support.”
In all, 64 counties in 24 states have been selected for federal Election Day scrutiny, including Horry County/Myrtle Beach in South Carolina.
The Justice Department monitoring — in person and remote — has been a regular part of Election Day since the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It also helps local officials serve persons with disabilities who need accessible voting options.
But Tuesday’s hyper-partisan vote — and what’s riding on it — is no typical election. It follows two years of unfounded Republican claims that widespread voter fraud flipped the 2020 presidential race from then-President Donald Trump to Joe Biden. On Jan. 6, 2021, a mob of Trump supporters — swept up in Trump’s baseless allegations of a stolen election — stormed the U.S. Capitol to stop congressional certification of Biden’s win.
The partisan distrust in the election process will extend into Tuesday. Threats against election workers have jumped nationwide. While the Justice Department’s election monitoring is considered routine, one state — Missouri — already has announced it will block federal presence at the one Missouri county included on the DOJ’s list.
Missouri Secretary of State John R. Ashcroft, a Republican, told The Washington Post that the Justice Department’s monitoring amounted to a bid to “bully a local election authority” and could “intimidate and suppress the vote.”
Federal observers have the same access to polling sites as any member of the public, said Paul Cox, general counsel of the state elections board. State laws allow people to monitor elections from outside the voting location, seek out voters coming and going from the locations, speak to campaigners and attend elections board meetings.
Mecklenburg County’s elections almost always draw federal attention, Elections Director Michael Dickerson told The Observer on Monday. He said he has never received an explanation why but does not believe it is tied to complaints of possible voting rights violations at polling sites.
“I have no idea why they come. Maybe it’s an easy airport in and out of D.C.,” Dickerson said.
While Arizona and other states have been linked to episodes of voter intimidation, Dickerson described the run-up to Tuesday’s voting in Mecklenburg as routine with more than 205,000 residents mailing in their ballots or visiting an early voting site.
“We’ve had calls on a couple of crazy people, but we get them every year,” he said. “It’s been nothing out of the norm, though we did have some folks who came into the office for board meetings still arguing the 2020 results. Good luck with that.”
Tuesday’s vote will culminate a 2022 campaign that includes bitter and pivotal races in North Carolina for U.S. Senate, Congress, the state legislature and the state Supreme Court.
Some of the campaign’s partisan rancor has spilled over to several of Mecklenburg’s 195 voting sites, where a few confrontations have broken out between campaign operatives from opposing camps.
“You always get campaign volunteers going at each other,” Dickerson said. “If you’re asking people to work together in the legislature or Congress, you would hope that they would have campaign people working together at voting sites. It’s just common sense.”
The monitors in North Carolina will include personnel from the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division as well as representatives from U.S. Attorney offices, including Dena King of Charlotte, the top federal prosecutor for the Western District of North Carolina.
“Free and fair elections are the cornerstone of American democracy,” King said in a statement to the Observer.
“Every citizen must be able to vote without interference or discrimination and to have that vote counted. Election officials and staff must also be able to serve without being subject to unlawful threats of violence.”
Bell said the number of complaints from N.C. polling places during the current election cycle is not abnormally large, though “some of the issues are overly concerning.”
“To have worked in elections since 2006 — this personally — my observation is that the temperature is higher this year than what we’ve seen in years past,” she said.
“We are prepared in a way for scenarios that we would not have thought of years ago. We have not been immune to threats and harassment and hostility towards election officials.”
Who to call
▪ To file a federal Election Day voting complaint: 800-253-3931 or https://civilrights.justice.gov/.
▪ For violations or questions related to the Americans with Disabilities Act at a polling site: 800-514-0301 or 833-610-1264 (TTY) or submit a complaint through a link on the Justice Department’s ADA website, at https://www.ada.gov/.
▪ For disruptions at a polling place, contact local election officials or polling place officials. If violence, threats or voter intimidation is involved, call 911. These complaints should also be reported to the Justice Department after local authorities have been contacted.
This story was originally published November 7, 2022 at 5:21 PM.
