NEW HANOVER COUNTY — A newly appointed New Hanover County Board of Elections approved an early voting plan cutting three voting sites open during previous municipal elections. Now, one municipality is sounding the alarm after missing its opportunity to request its locations remain.
READ MORE: New NHC elections board cuts early voting sites down to 1
The Wilmington City Council issued a statement Tuesday asking the board of elections to reconsider the early voting plan it approved on July 22. Aside from additional weekend hours, the plan follows what the state statutorily requires — one voting site at the elections office. However, the BOE approved the Northeast Library in lieu of its new BOE office.
Mayor Bill Saffo, along with council members Salette Andrews and David Joyner, told Port City Daily the seven-member Wilmington council was surprised by the omission of the NHC Senior Resource Center and Cape Fear Community College.
Council is now unanimously in support of bringing both back. Two of its members, Luke Waddell and Clifford Barnett, as well as the mayor are on the municipal ballot this year.
“If this is something that can be fixed, let’s fix it,” Joyner said. “We’ve got plenty of runway to make sure that we have sufficient voting sites open to make sure that we have a good geographic representation of different parts of the city having the ability to vote close to where they live.”
CFCC and the senior center were utilized in the 2021 and 2023 municipal elections, along with Carolina Beach Town Hall, which the beach town requested be in the plan initially. Mayor Lynn Barbee told Port City Daily it will continue to advocate for the site; it was the only municipality to submit a request but was denied.
City council didn’t advocate for its polling locations before the board’s July 22 meeting due to members overlooking a forwarded email from the city clerk’s office. In it, the BOE asked whether the city would like to request an additional site. Though this was the first time the BOE solicited requests, the email didn’t warn the city that BOE staff would not be including the Senior Resource Center and CFCC in its recommendation.
Andrews said she expected the sites would have been included in the early voting plan without having to ask.
“We certainly would have, I think, acted — reacted, whatever we needed to do to — to make that happen, that we kept the same sites,” Andrews said.
The board of elections called another meeting for Monday, Aug. 6. It can change its plan until Aug. 8, when it must be submitted to the state.
The city and BOE’s announcements were made after a week of public pushback over the early voting plan.
Many criticisms were directed at county commissioners, some residents mistaking them as the decision-makers on the early voting plan; they are not. Others blamed the voting site reduction on the county commissioners recent budget approval, which required a $30.6 million cut to operations across the entire county government.
However, the BOE’s budget has increased 15% from the last municipal election year’s actual spending, with the county’s position that its year-over-year increases have been more than enough to run a fair and accessible election.
Still, BOE Director Rae Hunter-Havens has maintained on the record and at the last meeting the county has asked her to cut $261,000 from the BOE’s planned budget. The BOE requested roughly the same amount in enhancements to this fiscal year’s budget; the county had planned on granting these requests, though commissioners left them out of their abrupt budget approval on June 12.
“It’s irresponsible and inaccurate to suggest the number of sites and the site selected are consequences of a budget with $327,000 more appropriation than FY25 and a purpose-designed and built space dedicated to elections,” County Manager Chris Coudriet wrote to commissioners in a July 27 email.
Both of the city’s requested sites, along with one at Carolina Beach Town Hall, were part of 2021 and 2023 early voting, albeit with fewer days and hours than the main site. The plan adopted on July 22 will revert the county back to pre-2021 elections, when the county had only one early voting site yet nearly half as many early voters.
As noted by Derrick Miller, a Democratic board member and former BOE chair, the additional sites may not drum up the same turnout as Election Day, but the downtown site is crucial for voter accessibility. It is located near people who may rely more on public transit or pedestrian paths for travel.
The New Hanover County chapter of the NAACP issued a press release on July 26 expressing similar concerns.
“While we recognize the inclusion of the Northeast Library as an early voting site, its location is not accessible for many members of our community, especially those living in the downtown and inner-city areas,” chapter president LeRon Montgomery said. “This disparity creates a barrier to participating in the electoral process and undermines the principles of fairness and inclusiveness.”
Saffo agreed as well.
“Acessibility to voting places is critically important to our community, to our democracy, so if we had to pay for it, I would most certainly support that,” Saffo said.
Left unread
So how did a lost email lead to the current situation?
Hunter-Havens sent an email to the city clerk, Penny Spicer-Sidbury, on June 3. The email stated the BOE would be choosing on an early voting plan on July 22 and asked if the city would like to have an early voting site in addition to the main polling place.
“Please provide official correspondence from your governing body regarding their preferences for early voting. Otherwise, the county board will decide based on their knowledge and experience,” Hunter-Havens wrote.
According to council member Andrews, the clerk didn’t forward the email to council until June 9. When she did, Sidbury wrote “please see email below and advise.”
“We get a lot of those from her,” Andrews said. “What we typically get from her are requests for our travel receipts, we got one last week from one of the news outlets. And that’s not something that typically I pay attention to or respond to, because finance has all that information.”
Andrews and Saffo said no one else on council indicated they had seen the email either. The mayor pointed out council receives hundreds of emails a day and it wasn’t unusual for one to slip through the cracks, especially if there’s no follow-up. He also shared he didn’t recall a time where the city had gone through the process of requesting an additional early voting site.
The clerk did not respond to PCD’s inquiries on the correspondence and neither did Hunter-Havens when asked why the message was only sent to the clerk, not the city manager nor council.
Hunter-Havens did provide this statement regarding the city correspondence:
“Our office openly communicated, by email, to our contacts with each of the four municipalities to share information and assess their individual interest with having additional sites beyond our required office (or in lieu of) site.”
The director added that representatives from the municipalities who expressed interest in having an additional site were “encouraged to participate and share their thoughts” directly with the BOE at the July 22 meeting.
“None of them chose to participate in this manner,” Hunter-Havens wrote.
Additionally, Hunter-Havens had warned the BOE may not be able to fund more than one early voting site back in June. In a public meeting on June 18, Hunter-Havens told the board the BOE would likely only have enough people to staff one early-voting site, probably at the new BOE building near the NHC Government Center.
At that meeting, the county also restored funding for two vital positions, though Hunter-Havens, who reported them as being cut at the meeting, didn’t update the public about their statuses in the days after, despite multiple opportunities.
However, Hunter-Havens reiterated multiple times at the July 22 meeting the BOE could choose any voting plan it deemed fit. If additional sites had been selected, their available days could have been reduced to remain in the budget, as the state does not require additional voting sites to be open the entire early voting period.
PCD asked Hunter-Havens for the maximum number of days the three additional sites could be open under her budget projections but didn’t get an answer by press.
According to the council members PCD spoke to,money is no issue. City spokesperson Lauren Edwards said the city has budgeted $243,817 for the 2025 elections “based on an estimate provided by the BOE.” Municipalities are required by state statute to cover the BOE’s cost of running their elections. PCD asked Edwards for the breakdown of how much of the budget was allocated for early voting versus Election Day but did not hear back by press.
Andrews has also put forth a resolution to return to three sites, which will be taken up at the Aug. 5 council meeting, one day before the BOE is set to take up the issue. Andrews said there is unanimous support.
Not to be forgotten
Though as evidenced by Carolina Beach, even if the city had submitted for additional sites before, there was no guarantee they would be granted.
Carolina Beach didn’t attend the July 22 meeting and didn’t push back on the BOE’s decision to disinclude its site from the early voting plan. As reported by WHQR, enthusiasm for Carolina Beach’s own voting site waned after the election’s filing period ended with only one contested race, the mayorship.
However, Mayor Lynn Barbee told Port City Daily Tuesday the town has contacted the BOE requesting an early voting site, should the BOE reassess the early voting plan. He provided several reasons he thought the town still needed one, the first being the town take reasonable steps to make voting accessible. He said the town likes consistency and would prefer not to go backward now that the county has undergone two municipal elections with four voting sites. The mayor thought it could be confusing for voters.
Barbee also noted the CB site would not be exclusive to its residents.
“Many Wilmington residents work in Carolina Beach, and they could use our voting location to vote in their municipal elections,” he said. “We want to support voters throughout the county who may be in Carolina Beach or where Carolina Beach is more convenient for them.”
Port City Daily asked the mayor if he had a response to the BOE’s suggestion that Carolina Beach’s early voter turnout didn’t justify an exclusive site.
“While voter turnout in CB may appear small, we have had elections swing by vote counts in single digits,” he said. “We do have contested races in Carolina and Kure Beaches.”
In past elections, Carolina Beach Town Hall opened a week into the early voting period for Oct. 28 and 29, then weekdays starting Oct. 30 through Friday, Nov. 3, plus Saturday, Nov. 4.
Hunter-Havens estimated this year’s expense to run the site the same days, noon to 5 p.m., would be almost $7,000. The figure doesn’t include Election Day reimbursement, which would bring the total closer to $21,000.
Miller, along with several members of the public, have raised the point that because the BOE is reimbursed by the municipalities, claiming the cost is a barrier to opening an additional site is disingenuous.
According to Hunter-Havens, the bookkeeping just wouldn’t work. Per her explanation, the BOE fronts the costs of the election — meaning the BOE has to have enough money in its budget to do so in the first place. It will send the municipalities invoices to recoup costs in early 2026. When the municipalities pay, Hunter-Havens essentially said this money is put into a different budgeting column.
“I’ve asked the county finance department and those representatives, and the way it’s been explained to me is that managing the request reduction of our operational expenses is a separate component than the revenue that’s generated,” Hunter-Havens said at the July 22 meeting.
Though the county’s Chief Financial Officer Eric Credle pushed back on that perspective, writing in an email to Hunter-Havens Tuesday that the reimbursements are a “net wash” to the county.
Battle of the boards
Despite the director’s warning in June, the adoption of one early voting site and the fallout associated with the public’s displeasure continued festering a wound in the county and BOE’s relationship.
The commissioners are essentially now taking the bulk of the heat for a decision they didn’t, at least directly, make for an election none are involved in. Arguments could be — and are being — made that the efforts to reduce the county’s overall budget by $30.6 million led to the reduction to one site. That is Hunter-Havens’ stated view, pointing to removal of the BOE’s enhancement requests.
“However, I don’t agree with the premise that budget availability limited the choices at the outset,” County Manager Chris Coudriet wrote in a July 24 meeting in response to Port City Daily’s initial reporting on the early voting plan. “Please remember, the approved budget for FY26 is in fact more than what was available in FY25. I’m sorry to see the narrative being less money therefore less service. The facts don’t align. I’m also stumped as to why that framing continues.”
In email replies to constituents, the county commissioners have indicated they support a reconsideration of the early voting plan for site additions. Commissioner Dane Scalise wrote: “I do think it is appropriate for the BOE to reconsider their vote and add additional voting sites. I will encourage them to do so.”
Commissioner LeAnn Pierce called the early voting plan “irresponsible and a disservice to the citizens of NHC.”
Making the matter worse, as the county emails indicate, is the BOE’s choice to use the Northeast Library for early voting. It’s returning to its former home base despite the county’s buildout of a new 7,000-square-foot, $5.6 million building on the NHC Government Center’s campus.
“I don’t believe anyone ever had the vision that a new headquarters facility would be the early vote site, but it certainly can and should be an early voting site,” he said.
At the suggestion of Hunter-Havens, the BOE chose the Northeast Library because its multi-purpose room is larger, at 2,500 square feet, compared to the BOE’s multipurpose room of 1,400 square feet.
“Relatively speaking, it’s a small early voting site,” Hunter-Havens said on July 22, referring to the BOE’s room.
The county manager and commissioners weren’t in favor of the move.
“I know municipal elections generally have less turnout, but putting early voting at the Northeast Library? That really makes no sense, except if you think about it,” Commissioner Stephanie Walker wrote in an email exchange with county staff last week.
Coudriet noted a main voting site would need to support the administrative functions of the early voting site, storage of the resources needed, and the actual voting space for the public, which the BOE office had more space and was equipped to do. Though, at the July 22 meeting, it was indicated the Northeast Library would just be used for voting, while all other administrative functions would take place down the road at the office.
Miller — the only BOE member to respond to PCD by press — said he had the feeling only the Northeast Library was being considered.
“I did not sense an opportunity to push for the BOE then,” Miller wrote on Monday. “I don’t know if that will be different when we meet next. I hope we’ll have a more thorough discussion of the suitability of that site as a polling location then.”
[Ed. Note: This piece has been updated to more precisely describe the city clerk’s correspondence with council; she forwarded Hunter-Havens’ email to council and asked for advisement. Hunter-Havens’ email was not put in a seperate attachment.]
Reach journalist Brenna Flanagan at brenna@localdailymedia.com.
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