In a recent exclusive interview with Carolina Journal, North Carolina State Auditor Dave Boliek shared his thoughts on his appointments to the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE), including why he felt the change was needed and why others should feel the same, regardless of which party they belong to.
A provision in Senate Bill 382, which became law in December, allows the state auditor to make new elections-board appointments and assume administrative oversight of the board. It had traditionally been under the governor.
The law requires the state auditor to appoint members from lists of nominees provided by the state party chairs of the two political parties with the highest number of registered affiliates.
On April 30, the North Carolina Court of Appeals blocked a lower-court ruling favoring Democrat Gov. Josh Stein in his legal battle with state legislative leaders and Boliek over election-board appointments.
That paved the way for the state auditor to name his choices to be on the state election board the next day.
New and returning members to the NCSBE were sworn in on May 7, including Republicans Francis X. De Luca, Robert Anthony Rucho, and Stacy Clyde “Four” Eggers IV. Eggers, along with Democratic members Siobhan Millen and Jeff Carmon, were already on the board and will remain.
Boliek told CJ that De Luca, a retired colonel with the US Marines, has not only a tremendous amount of experience and knowledge with respect to elections, but also organizational leadership, having spent more than 17 years as the president of the Civitas Institute (which merged with the John Locke Foundation in 2020) and then serving as a member of the North Carolina Ethics Commission.
Likewise, he noted Rucho’s experience, citing his more than 17 years of experience as a North Carolina state senator and that he served on committees and commissions dealing with elections and the State Board of Elections.
“He is someone that understands state government and has a real keen mind with respect to what the issues at the Board of Elections are,” Boliek said. “This is somebody who understands what’s going on in the state of North Carolina and doesn’t need to get up to speed. He already understands elections and understands what the goals are.”
With Eggers, he said, there is consistency with someone who has already served on the board.
Boliek felt that keeping previous Democratic board members Millen and Carmon on the board was the responsible thing to do.
When asked why former Republican board member Kevin Lewis wasn’t chosen, he said that while Lewis “is a fine person with a lot of credibility and experience,” the people of North Carolina expected change and thought a fresh look at the state Board of Elections was important.
As far as the new executive director, Sam Hayes, Boliek says he brings a lot to the table.
“He has a tremendous amount of knowledge in the area of elections and election law,” he said. “He also has worked across state agencies, having spent time at DEQ [NC Department of Environmental Quality] and with the state treasurer, as well as his current position with the General Assembly. So, he certainly understands how state government works, and he has a lot of respect from people on both sides of the aisle for his competence and for his ability to solve problems, so I think it’s a fantastic hire.”
Hayes replaces Karen Brinson Bell, who served as executive director since 2019.
While he ran to be the state auditor and didn’t expect the General Assembly to delegate the NCSBE to his office, Boliek understands why they did and believes constitutionally that the General Assembly can delegate authority to members of the Council of State, something that Labor Commissioner Luke Farley had also said at the most recent Council of State meeting.
“The oversight of elections has been with the governor since its inception,” Stein told reporters in a briefing after the meeting. “There’s not a state in this country where the auditor is the one responsible for every single election. This was simply a partisan move by the General Assembly to take power from the democratically elected governor.”
“Even in the governor’s own argument, there are many states across the country where the secretary of state, for example, has election authority,” Boliek said. “So, I’m curious if the General Assembly had delegated the State Board of Elections to the secretary of state [Democrat Elaine Marshall], would the governor’s office have had the same argument?”
He said that while he has had a really good and productive working relationship with Stein on many issues so far, he disagrees with his team’s legal analysis with respect to the Council of State and the independence of Council of State members. To him, it makes sense to have the NCSBE under the state auditor’s purview.
“At a high level, you’re counting votes,” Boliek said. “Who better to assure that the counting is right than the auditor’s office?”
However, he stressed that the NCSBE makes its own independent choices, and the board’s changes in management have been good.
Boliek also thinks that North Carolinians should be concerned about what the prior management of the NCSBE did and didn’t do.
“My personal opinion is that it doesn’t matter what you think of legal arguments one way or the other,” he said. “For example, in the Griffin-Riggs case, the fact that there are tens of thousands of voter entries on the voter rolls that aren’t complete to me is mismanagement. Because my question is: What is the Board of Elections doing when they’re not running elections if they’re not maintaining accurate voter files? That seems to me to be Management 101, and the fact that the Board of Elections and the management of the Board of Elections have had nothing to say about the fact that these entries aren’t complete and have taken no action thus far to work on completing those voter roll entries.”
Boliek finished up by saying his staff, including chief financial officer Sarah Dozier, are working hard with the financial staff of the NCSBE to find out what is needed for the board from a budget standpoint from the General Assembly, as his office was charged with budgetary responsibilities beginning July 1.
“Sarah comes from the Centennial Authority, and she has a tremendous amount of experience in this arena,” he told CJ. “Her team and the team at the Board of Elections are prepared and working on the financial resources that are necessary to complete what I think the people of North Carolina expect out of the Board of Elections. It’s really important that we look at the technology, and I’ve said this before, that is an issue across a lot of agencies and institutions in North Carolina. But there are technology needs in terms of modernization of our elections computer programs and software that that that need to be addressed and the time is now.”
Boliek said they can’t afford to wait and need to “bite the bullet” and work on modernizing the technology. They hope to implement some modernization before the midterms, but definitely before the next presidential election.
The post Exclusive: Boliek discusses NC election-board changes first appeared on Carolina Journal.