NC State Auditor Introduces a New Threat to Voting Rights

You know that times are tough for democracy when your State Auditor hires a partisan operative with a history of opposing voting rights to work with local county elections boards.

That’s what State Auditor Dave Boliek has done in hiring former Republican state party executive director Dallas Woodhouse for a new job in the Auditor’s office. Boliek said that the new position would be his “eyes and ears on the ground” and help shape early voting plans, elections policy, and so-called “election integrity” efforts. 

Highly Partisan Figure’s Record

In a contentious NC State Board of Elections (NCSBE) meeting last week, Democratic NCSBE member Siobhan Millen called Woodhouse a “highly partisan figure” and began to say that “It’s difficult to imagine a person who would be less suited to bringing election integrity…” Before she could finish her sentence, she was cut off and shouted over by NCSBE Chair Francis De Luca, a Republican appointee to the board.

A conservative activist with a long history of working for right-wing organizations like the Civitas Institute and the Carolina Journal, Woodhouse’s most recent job was as North Carolina director for the group American Majority, which focuses on helping Republicans and hurting Democrats in elections. This suggests it is highly unlikely that Woodhouse’s advice to Auditor Boliek will be properly nonpartisan or focused on improving North Carolinians’ access to the voting process.

Making Voting More Difficult

Instead, strategies for so-called “election integrity” campaigns by right-leaning groups most often focus on changes to make voting more difficult, including limits on early voting periods and sites and mail-in ballots. As shown in the long, unsuccessful attempt by losing Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin to retroactively disqualify thousands of legal voters after the fact, those so-called “integrity” efforts are now going even further. Their efforts to challenge the registration of voters whose records are allegedly missing data like the last four digits of their Social Security number, often as a result of clerical errors by elections staff, are likely to continue.

The involvement of partisan “advisers” on the paid staff of public agencies involved in the mechanics of voting administration will only threaten voting rights.