NEW HANOVER COUNTY — Recent county budget cuts are putting election integrity on the line and most likely will result in the reduction of early voting sites, according to New Hanover County Board of Elections Director Rae Hunter-Havens.
READ MORE: NHC cuts $36M and 70 people to downsize tax rate, abandons pre-K, food co-op
The BOE called an emergency meeting on Wednesday to discuss reduced funding in the county’s newly adopted budget. The county will cut $36 million and more than 70 positions before the new fiscal year begins on July 1.
Hunter-Havens said the BOE had two senior positions removed as part of this culling. The county also asked them to further reduce their planned FY25-26 budget by $261,490 (though their overall budget will still be increased over last year’s approved amount). The BOE requested roughly the same amount in additional funding to meet new state requirements and improve operations for next fiscal year, which the county had planned to oblige until commissioners passed 3-2 a significantly reduced budget on June 12.
Wednesday’s emergency meeting was set up as a question-and-answer between board members present in the room — board chair Derrick Miller and members Bruce Kemp and James Morgan Jr.
Miller asked Hunter-Havens if she was confident the BOE could conduct November’s municipal election and the March 2026 midterm primary “accurately, securely and within all the deadlines and other requirements” with the budget it’s been handed.
Hunter-Havens said no.
“This could have an impact on the level of voter access and affect equity throughout the county in terms of where different sites are established,” she said. “The second challenge for us are the staffing cuts to our existing staff, which again, is going to significantly reduce our capacity to perform certain functions, critical functions that are key in the conduction of a fair and honest election.”
The director said she could not make up the $261,490 with cutting supplies alone, noting the county already asked her to cut down on contracts, though she said this wasn’t possible.
“We would have to reduce the number of election officials we need,” Hunter-Havens said.
She said the best way to address the challenge would be to limit early voting. With current funding, she said the BOE will likely only have enough people to staff one early-voting site, probably at the new BOE building near the NHC Government Center.
“We are somewhat centrally located, but certainly that can make or create accessibility challenges for voters elsewhere in the county,” Hunter-Havens said.
The county had four early-voting stops in the last municipal election and mid-term primary, but Hunter-Havens said she had budgeted for three stops in this year’s municipal election before the county’s budget adoption last week.
Former early-voting sites have been the Carolina Beach Municipal Complex, the NHC Senior Resource Center in midtown, and CFCC’s campus downtown. In the November 2024 election, almost all of the locations experienced hours-long wait times, though presidential contests typically draw larger voter turnout.
Hunter-Havens added polling place hours could also contract from what was offered in previous years, such as eliminating weekend hours.
Additionally, voters in assisted living facilities could have a harder time casting their ballot. The BOE currently sends a team to facilities to help residents file for absentees and update their registration, but Hunter-Havens said she was unsure if this program could continue with limited funds.
Hunter-Havens is also worried about the toll of less help and changing laws on remaining staff. The director pointed to new requirements Senate Bill 382 which implements shorter deadlines for processing and tabulating absentee, provisional and incomplete ballots.
Hunter-Havens said she really didn’t know how the BOE would meet the new provisional deadline. Provisional ballots are cast when people haven’t met the qualifications to vote — they could be at the wrong precinct, forgot to bring an I.D. to the polling place or have a problem with their registration. Their votes are tabulated after the board of elections confirms the voter was eligible.
Under S.B. 382, the votes must be researched, reconciled and counted by three days following Election Day. Boards normally have until canvass to do so, which occurred 10 days after the election.
Board member Kemp asked Hunter-Havens if they could continue to count ballots after the deadline.
“My thought is we just keep going until we finish because we have to do it,” Kemp said.
Hunter-Havens has asked the State Board of Elections to clarify if that would be possible, but they weren’t able to answer. The director said the local BOE should prepare for the possibility of not being able to count ballots after the third day, meaning some votes may not be counted, even if eligible.
With less staff, this will put more work on those who remain, particularly full-time, permanent staff who currently work 80- to 100-hour weeks during elections, according to Hunter-Havens.
“We come at it from a place of dedication and pride,” she said. “We do everything we can to make sure that every eligible ballot is counted.”
BOE staff are also tasked with completing their work while monitoring less-experienced temporary staff, who will be given more responsibilities now with fewer employees and expedited timelines. Hunter-Havens added skilled team members simply won’t have the time to check behind the temps.
“The risk of mistakes will increase,” Hunter-Havens said. “You’re assigning critical tasks to individuals who may not have the knowledge or the technical skills to execute those tasks correctly, regardless of their best efforts.”
With more responsibility and longer hours, temporary staff’s morale could fall, and people could leave as the election nears, as noted by board member Morgan. Even if they don’t drop out completely, their availability could change, Hunter-Havens added.
The director explained this was the case with temporary workers in the November 2024 election.
“In the past election, we experienced an operational challenge because the availability of our temporary staff did change in the last week before Election Day, and because of that, we were not able to maintain and process all the ballots as they returned each day,” Hunter-Havens said.
Chair Miller followed up asking for clarification: “So this current budget makes the problems we faced a few months ago worse?”
Hunter-Havens said yes.
In the days following the November election, the BOE revealed nearly 2,000 mail-in ballots remained uncounted, though state law requires all absentee ballots to be tabulated on Election Day. The BOE claimed the decision was in line with State Board of Elections guidance, but the state didn’t back the claim.
Coudriet, who criticized the BOE’s actions and would later hire a third-party auditor to investigate, said Hunter-Havens told him the cutoff was made due to the work needed to vet ballots and sort them into proper precincts. Commissioner candidate Dane Scalise filed a complaint citing the BOE broke numerous state laws, though it was dismissed, as all ballots were counted by canvass and the delay didn’t change the outcome of the election.
Hunter-Havens did not indicate a problem running the election during the 2024 budget cycle. However, both she and Miller later suggested the BOE didn’t have enough resources, particularly staffing, to juggle the influx of voters turning out for the presidential race, along with the unexpected responsibilities put on elections boards by changes at the state level.
The third-party investigation also recommended the county “carefully evaluate the NHCBOE’s FY25/26 budget requests to ensure adequate allocation of resources necessary to address operational inefficiencies and meet statutory requirements.”
In this year’s budget cycle, the county’s original plan was to provide an additional $20,000 for a new software system and $150,000 to cover additional positions as the BOE saw fit. However, the BOE’s full list of requests made it into the recommended budget presented in May, including three part-time admin technicians, a voting services manager, an elections registration coordinator and an education and communications coordinator.
The addition of the full request followed an email campaign led by BOE Chair Miller. He used the county’s server (a breach of policy in the county’s view) to send an email to roughly 2,000 people, advocating for commissioners to fund the BOE’s entire request. The move inundated commissioners with emails, leading Miller to call off the correspondence.
The move also inflamed already-irritated relations between the county and BOE after the ballot counting issue and third-party investigation.
Some commissioners then saw the BOE’s request unfavorably, including Scalise, who wrote the following on X: “More funding won’t fix what’s wrong at @NHCVOTE. NHC BOE NEEDS NEW LEADERSHIP IMMEDIATELY.”
Last Thursday at the county’s budget session, many of the BOE’s enhancements had been removed.
The adopted county budget passed in a 3-2 vote at the commissioners’ agenda review meeting on June 12. County staff identified $36 million that needed to be slashed from the budget to reach the 30.6-cent property tax rate desired by the Republican majority — Chair Bill Rivenbark, Vice Chair LeAnn Pierce and Commissioner Scalise.
As the $36-million cuts were presented for the first time at that agenda review, Democratic commissioners Rob Zapple and Stephanie Walker accused the other commissioners of “blindsiding” both county staff and the public.
This seemed to be the case for the board of elections as well. It recently filled the two senior positions and they were nearing a start date. Hunter-Havens described their duties as technical in nature, including programming, testing and completing tabulations on voting equipment, reporting election results, creating user accounts, managing in-person voting logistics, and answering public records requests and questions.
According to Hunter-Havens, the positions were vacant after the employees resigned following the November 2024 election, thus probably why the county marked them for removal.
Kemp, thinking with an “optimistic” mindset, suggested funding could change further down the line. He suggested funding the municipal election like the BOE has in the past with the hope of going to the county for more money before the primary.
Hunter-Havens wasn’t keen on the idea, noting it would be a tough turnaround to hire and onboard people between the November election and March primary. She also didn’t know how that worked logistically with the county’s reimbursement process.
“My thought is that there’s no way the commissioners or the county manager would have intentionally disabled this board by doing what appears to have happened,” Kemp said.
Kemp advocated for the board to remain nimble, later pointing out the bad timing of the budget cut implementation and the loss of the New Hanover County BOE for a month.
Also part of S.B. 382, state law now includes language requiring new BOE members to be sworn in on the Tuesday closest to the third Monday in July — this year being July 22. However, outgoing board members leave their posts on the last Tuesday in June. This statute change means boards of elections across the state will have no leadership, aside from staff, for around a month.
Hunter-Havens said the State Board is aware of the local situation and has stated its commitment to assisting in any way.
As far as the enhancement cuts, the BOE agreed to allow Hunter-Havens to shift funding and make cuts as she sees fit to comply with the county mandate.
Port City Daily reached out to each commissioner for their thoughts on the BOE’s emergency meeting and if they would consider adjusting funding.
Commissioner Walker was the only one to respond by press.
“The consequences are very real: fewer early voting sites, longer lines, overburdened staff, greater potential for error, and ultimately, voter disenfranchisement across the political spectrum. Also, this will put a greater burden on municipalities, who will have to find more money in their budgets to help pay for elections.
She said she would support restoring funds and making the BOE a main priority to allocate any additional funding to, though she said she has not heard of a plan to remedy any budget cuts from the Republican commissioners. She also spoke to the budget as a whole, stating:
“This is another example of why this budget is not good for our county. Not only did it raise taxes, but it also cuts essential services. It does not reflect responsible planning. And there will be many more examples like this in the days and weeks to come, as more and more people take a closer look at what’s actually been slashed in this budget and realize the services they expect will be degraded.”
[Editor’s Note: This piece has been updated to reflect the budget cuts referenced in the piece are cuts from the BOE’s planned budget for next fiscal year, not the BOE’s approved budget from last year.]
Reach journalist Brenna Flanagan at brenna@localdailymedia.com.
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