Ousted top election official in key swing state urges civility toward ‘caretakers of our democracy’
By CHRISTINA A. CASSIDY
Associated Press
The former North Carolina elections director who was ousted this week after a politically motivated move by Republicans said Friday she hopes the new leadership will approach elections in a nonpartisan way and called for an end to verbal attacks against those who oversee the voting process.
Karen Brinson Bell, who will leave the job next week, has served as the state’s top election official for the last six years — through hurricanes, the COVID-19 pandemic and the aftermath of the 2020 election. In an interview Friday with The Associated Press, she described the “filthy language” and insults that had been directed at her over the years and attributed it to a “lack of understanding” about the law and her job to follow it.
She noted that other election officials across the country have been subjected to death threats and harassment in recent years. Since the 2020 election and the false claims of widespread fraud and manipulation of voting machines, several individuals have been prosecuted for threatening election officials.
“I hope that we get back to a place of civility, a place where it’s understood that election professionals are the caretakers of our democracy and that very fundamental right to vote,” Brinson Bell said. “And our integrity should not be questioned for adhering to the rules and making sure that they’re executed properly.”
Brinson Bell’s removal followed a law passed late last year before state Republicans lost their supermajority in the legislature, which they used to override the governor’s veto. It took the Democratic governor’s authority to appoint election board members and handed that power to the state auditor, a Republican.
While there’s precedent for a new director to be hired when a change occurs in the board, the circumstances of Brinson Bell’s ouster were extraordinary.
The GOP has tried several times since 2016 to remove the governor’s authority to choose members of the state election board, whose duties include carrying out campaign finance laws, certifying election results and setting rules on a host of voting administration details.
Democratic Gov. Josh Stein, who was elected last November, sued over the law, and a group of trial judges determined it was unconstitutional and shouldn’t be allowed to take effect. But a state Court of Appeals panel overruled them by allowing the new board appointments to proceed.
At the new board’s first meeting on May 7, they voted to replace Brinson Bell with Sam Hayes, the top lawyer for the Republican House speaker. State Republicans have long been unhappy with Brinson Bell, emphasizing on her role in a legal settlement in 2020, during the pandemic, that temporarily extended the state’s mail ballot deadline to nine days rather than the usual three-day limit.
Francis De Luca, the new board chair, said in a statement on Friday that the board wanted to “go in a new direction” and chose not to renew Brinson Bell’s contract, which expires on May 15.
“The Democratic State Board members did the same thing in 2019, when they had the opportunity to appoint a new director to implement their vision for the agency,” De Luca said.
State Senate leader Phil Berger said he had no problem with Brinson Bell’s departure.
“She was a partisan actor when she was put in that place, and she acted in a partisan manner all along,” Berger said. “And so I am hopeful that the change that we’ve made will see decisions made by the board based on what the law is, not what the board thinks the law should be.”
Asked whether the board picking Hayes could mean partisan decisions favoring the GOP, Berger, a Republican, said he didn’t believe that would be the case: “Everybody who looks at it can decide what they think it looks like.”
A registered Democrat, Brinson Bell said she never acted in a partisan way and drew on her experiences as a county election official and regional support staffer for the state Board of Elections. She noted that her replacement does not have experience in election administration and said she hopes he will rely on the institutional knowledge and expertise of the board staff as well as the state’s 100 county election directors.
“I hope that Mr. Hayes will lean on that and recognize that he has been given the greatest opportunity of his life, and he is now our state’s caretaker of democracy and the fundamental right to vote,” Brinson Bell said.
In many states, the top election official is the secretary of state, an elected position just like those for governor or attorney general. North Carolina is among a handful of states that have created state election boards with appointed directors as a way to make the positions less political.
It hasn’t always turned out that way. In Wisconsin, which has a setup similar to North Carolina’s, Republicans created a bipartisan commission to run elections starting in 2016 after they were unhappy with its predecessor, which placed retired judges in charge of election oversight. The nonpartisan leader of the elections commission, Meagan Wolfe, was appointed to her position in 2019 and confirmed unanimously by the Republican-controlled Senate for a term ending in the middle of 2023.
After President Donald Trump lost Wisconsin in 2020, Wolfe became the target for Republicans who falsely asserted there was widespread fraud despite no evidence to back up the claims.
Wolfe has survived numerous attempts to oust her. Most recently, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in February that she can legally retain her position despite not being reappointed and confirmed by the state Senate after her first term ended.
Republicans running for secretary of state in 2022 argued for returning the power of elections to that office, even though it hasn’t had that authority since 1974. The Democratic incumbent won the election and talk of ceding election oversight to the office has faded.
In North Carolina, GOP leaders also criticized the previous board for what they called errors in how election laws were carried out for the 2024 election. It led to litigation in the race for a state Supreme Court seat that dragged on for months.
Brinson Bell said Friday that election was conducted “as the rules were set, and that is how we finished the election, as well.” She criticized efforts across the country to change the rules after an election has been held and said the voters whose ballots were challenged in the North Carolina Supreme Court race were all eligible to vote under rules set before the election.
“You don’t change the rules of the game after the game’s begun, nor after the game has ended,” Brinson Bell said. “I think that we all need to be mindful of — is this foretelling what’s to come? Is this going to be the type of challenge to our elections time and time again?”
Brinson Bell said she wasn’t sure of her next move but hoped to continue working in elections.
“The one thing that I will be is a voter, a registered voter in North Carolina,” she said. “And I hope that these folks that we’re handing this off to will value my right to cast my ballot and have my say just as much as I do for them.”
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Cassidy reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writers Gary D. Robertson in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, contributed to this report.
