[Editor’s note: This article was originally published by NC Newsline.]
A Republican member of the Jackson County Board of Elections said he was pressured to vote to keep an early voting site off Western Carolina University’s campus this fall.
That member, Jay Pavey, voted for a plan that included a WCU early voting polling place, despite what he said were threats from his party to remove him from the board if he did.
“I’ve been told that if I don’t vote a particular way, that they will, they will do whatever they have to do to remove me from the board,” Pavey said.
Jackson County Elections Board Chairman Bill Thompson also said he’d been getting “pressure from above” to prevent the campus from hosting an early voting site for the fall election. His was the sole vote against placing a site on the university campus.
“I’m probably the lone holdout, and it’s pressure from above,” Thompson said.
The Republican Party is concerned about university sites because of neutrality, he said. “They want it to stay off campus,” Thompson said at one point.
The remarkably candid public discussion at Tuesday’s Jackson County Board of Elections meeting laid bare the Republican Party’s interest in preventing WCU from having an early voting site.
Pavey said he was voting for the WCU site because it was the best location.
“I know that I’m bucking my party on this, and I may be a one-term member of the Board of Elections,” he said. “If that’s it, that’s fine. I will stand on this hill and I will die on this hill.”
Hannah Preston of Influence NC provided NC Newsline with the full audio of the board’s meeting. Influence NC is a nonprofit encouraging political engagement using social media. Members and volunteers also attend state and local board of elections meetings, Preston said. They are monitoring the Jackson and Guilford elections boards because those groups rejected plans that would have opened early voting sites on university campuses for the last primary.
The state Board of Elections reviews local early voting plans that don’t win unanimous approval at the county board level. The state board either picks from competing plans or adopts its own. The state board in January gave final approval to primary election voting plans that rejected WCU, NC A&T State University, UNC-Greensboro, and Elon University as early voting sites. Republicans hold a 3-2 majority on the state board.
Before this year, WCU had had a polling place on campus since 2016 that had been used in five general elections and four primaries.
Pavey said Tuesday that he and former Jackson GOP elections board member Wes Hanemayer were called in to talk to the state Republican Party Executive Committee about their support for the WCU site. Hanemayer recently resigned from the board. Minutes show he attended the April board meeting as a member.
Pavey said opening the WCU site was best for the county because it was needed to handle expected general election turnout.
“When Wes and I made it clear what we were going to vote, we were asked to come before the Executive Committee of the Republican Party” to justify it, Pavey said.
“And we presented them evidence, we presented them numbers, we presented them everything,” Pavey said. “And all I heard was, ‘Well, we just don’t want it on campus. We just don’t want it on campus.’”
Pavey could not be reached for comment Tuesday afternoon. The person who answered the phone at his law office said he went home sick after the board meeting.
State GOP spokesman Matt Mercer did not respond directly to an emailed questions about whether the state party pressured Pavey about his vote.
“The NCGOP is deeply committed to ensuring access to early voting locations for all eligible voters and we are appreciative of the efforts from Auditor Dave Boliek and the State Board to maintain clean voter rolls and integrity in the administration of elections,” Mercer wrote.
Hanemayer could not be reached.
The Jackson board members did not identify themselves before speaking, but one man, likely Democratic member Roy Osborn, suggested instructions were coming from the state Auditor’s Office. Betsy Swift is the other Democrat on the board.
The Republican-led legislature stripped the governor’s power to appoint the state Board of Elections members and gave it to Republican state Auditor Dave Boliek after the 2024 election.
The state and local elections boards switched from majority Democratic to majority Republican.
Boliek appointed the chairs of all county boards. He also hired former GOP operative Dallas Woodhouse to work with local elections boards.
Randy Brechbiel, the auditor’s communications director, did not respond to an email Tuesday.
Thompson did not respond to an email Tuesday afternoon. At the meeting, Thompson would not say when asked who in Raleigh he’d spoken to about the early voting site at WCU, other than that there were “several of them.”
The board rejected Thompson’s suggestion that they wait for Hanemayer’s replacement to be appointed before voting.
Pavey said the GOP is looking for someone who would vote against the campus site.
The board voted 3-1 for an early voting plan that included WCU.
Because the vote was not unanimous, the state board will again have the final say.
“It will go to Raleigh, and I will wash my hands of it,” Thompson said.
