NEW HANOVER COUNTY — The New Hanover County Board of Elections is requesting the county fund only one additional position next fiscal year, leaving out two positions requested last year under different leadership.
BOE staff — currently headed by executive aide to the county manager Crystal Whittaker and Assistant County Manager Lisa Wurtzbacher — has cited the need for an elections specialist and an upgrade to its voting software. The board approved of requesting the county include both in its budget unanimously at its Jan. 13 meeting.
READ MORE: 2 positions restored during elections board emergency meeting, though not divulged to public
According to staff, the technology item would upgrade the current voting system from EVS 5240 to EVS 6300, providing “improved system functionality, greater operational efficiency, and enhanced usability for election administration.”
The specialist position would assist with various aspects of the elections process, including voter registration, absentee-by-mail administration, logistics coordination and election preparation activities. Wurtzbacher said the elections specialist’s specific duties will be left for Harris to decide.
The recommendation was made last week, ahead of the new elections director, DeNay Harris, taking over the BOE on Feb. 3. County departments were given a deadline of Jan. 5 to submit enhancement requests for initial review, though the BOE was given timeline flexibility to allow for the board to vote on the matter.
In the next few months, county staff will begin to craft budget recommendations, culminating in the county manager’s recommended budget based on commissioner priorities. The BOE’s enhancements would need final approval from the New Hanover County commissioners to go in next year’s budget, beginning July 1, 2026.
While the BOE receives its funding from the county, it is an independent body with its own decision-making power. However, Wurtzbacher and Whittaker have been leading the staff since the BOE’s former director, Rae Hunter-Havens, announced her abrupt retirement in October, citing health reasons.
In the year leading up to her departure, the BOE had a strained relationship with the county marred by an investigation initiated by the county manager and an (ultimately unsuccessful) ballot challenge from a county commissioner. Both stemmed from the BOE’s failure to count absentee ballots by the state-mandated deadline during the November 2024 election.
The BOE didn’t request more staff in the spring of 2024, but Hunter-Havens said, by November, a change in election laws and challenges with temporary staff led to the ballot-counting issue. Come spring 2025, six positions were requested, though three of them part-time.
Only one was picked up by the county — the education and communications coordinator position, though it was converted from an existing county role. Two of the BOE’s current positions also were caught in the budget shuffle. In seeking positions to eliminate as part of the commissioner’s budget cut, the county identified two BOE positions that were vacated after the 2024 election.
The move to eliminate the positions prompted Hunter-Havens to claim 2025’s election integrity and security were in jeopardy and reductions to early voting accessibility would suffer as a result. The director made the announcement in a public meeting on June 18. Meanwhile, county staff were restoring the two positions behind the scenes, though Hunter-Havens didn’t disclose this to the public despite questions from Port City Daily.
Despite her retirement, Hunter-Havens is being paid a $70,000 consulting fee through April. Wurtzbacher was named special assistant on Oct. 14 and Whittaker was appointed interim director in December.
The board of elections retains ultimate authority over elections management, though its five members have also changed since last year’s tumult and the board’s overall political leaning has shifted from its Democratic majority. The board now has three Republican members, just the same as the county commissioners.
None of the members at last week’s meeting voiced direct opposition to staff’s enhancement recommendation, though Democratic member Derrick Miller questioned why the BOE would be asking for fewer positions than it did last year.
Part of the six positions requested last year were three part-time admin technicians, a voting services manager, an elections registration coordinator and an education and communications coordinator.
All the requests made it into the county’s manager’s recommended budget in May; however, at the behest of the board’s Republican majority, the approved budget cut expenses by $36 million.
This year staff decided to recommend three part-time administrative technician positions be converted into one full time position. Wurtzbacher said she thought it easier to find someone who wants to work full time, as opposed to trying to find three folks looking for part-time work.
As for the voting services manager and elections registration coordinator, Wurtzbacher said the responsibilities for each were pulled out of current positions at the BOE.
“It was adding two new layers of supervision,” she said. “Really moving to that level of position, I feel like you need to have a new director in place to determine. They may not want that layer of a manager, they may not want a layer of a coordinator, supervising a specialist and, so I feel like that would be better for a future fiscal year.”
Wurtzbacher said adding one position at time, observing how much of a workload the new hire could manage, would be better than adding multiple simultaneously.
Republican board member John Lyon said he thought the recommendation was “making progress”; no other board members spoke.
BOE staff also provided an update on the current budget, notifying the board that several of the BOE’s line items were anticipated to exceed their budgeted amounts by the end of the fiscal year, including contracted services and supplies. However, Wurtzbacher said she thought overall expenses would finish in line with the BOE’s overall allocation.
“I’ve heard you both reference procedural efficiencies and efficiencies that you found and process efficiencies that you’ve identified,” Miller said later in the meeting, “[C]ould you give us some examples of what those process improvements, efficiencies, procedural improvements are?”
Wurtzbacher said there was not “one big thing” but rather small opportunities for improvement. For instance, the county’s strategy department is looking at ways to improve the “manual” and “very inefficient” payroll process for poll workers. She said staff are assessing automation and if that process can be integrated into the new software.
Additionally, Wurtzbacher said she would like to explore automating the reimbursement process for municipal elections, where local governments pay the BOE for the cost of running their elections.
“When you have a new director, and even now, with Kristen [Daley] being here, we are looking at, how can we do things better?” she said. “I think that’s something that that department should always do continuously.”
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