The Columbus County Board of Elections is expected to vote Monday on a plan to reduce the number of early-voting sites from five to three for the November election.
The plan, proposed by Republican board Chair Jillian McPherson-Edge on June 8, would eliminate early-voting sites in Riegelwood and Fair Bluff. Voters would be able to cast their ballots ahead of Election Day at the Columbus County Board of Elections office in Whiteville and at locations in Chadbourn and Tabor City.
Local residents, along with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice and the North Carolina NAACP, have pushed back against the proposal, saying it would burden the county’s rural, Black, elderly, disabled, and low-income residents.
“It makes no sense to go against the will of voters and reduce access to the polls,” Curtis Hill, president of the Columbus County chapter of the NAACP, said in a press release from the Southern Coalition for Social Justice. “Despite many barriers, Columbus County voters are still determined to make it to the polls, and we hope the board passes an early-voting plan that protects access.”
Seventy percent of Columbus County residents who cast ballots in the 2024 election voted early, up from 52% in 2022, state data shows. Riegelwood was the third most used early-voting site in the county in 2024 and the second most used in 2018 and 2016, according to the Southern Coalition for Social Justice.
More than 1,000 voters cast early ballots at the Fair Bluff site in the 2020 and 2024 elections, when voters cast ballots for president, according to the coalition.
Both sites have been open since at least May 2008, according to historical voting site records with the N.C. State Board of Elections. Many of those using the locations are elderly and disabled, the coalition said. It said the Riegelwood site typically sees a large number of Black and Democratic voters.
But McPherson-Edge said the Riegelwood and Fair Bluff sites don’t draw enough voters to justify the cost of keeping them open.
In the 2022 general election, 4,858 voters cast early ballots at the elections office in Whiteville, County Elections Director Ashley Collins told the board in May. The Riegelwood site had 1,394 voters, and the Fair Bluff site had 724, she said.
It would cost more than $59,400 to open five early-voting sites for 13 days and more than $64,000 for 14 days, Collins said. The N.C. General Assembly is currently considering legislation that would cut the number of early-voting days.
“It is very clear that some early voting locations consistently serve significantly fewer voters than others,” McPherson-Edge said at the June 8 meeting after listening to dozens of residents speak out against the site reduction plan. “While every vote is important, we must also consider the costs associated with operating each site.”
Columbus County has the money to operate all five sites, the Southern Coalition for Social Justice said. County commissioners passed a budget this month that includes more than $688,000 in election expenditures for the fiscal year that starts July 1. That’s a 60% increase from 2022, the most recent midterm election.
The Southern Coalition for Social Justice says residents who could no longer vote early in Riegelwood and Fair Bluff would have to drive between 30 minutes to over an hour round-trip to vote early at the remaining sites.
“If adopted, this proposal would cause large-scale disruption and confusion during early voting, long lines during peak hours in early-voting, and on election day, and impose prohibitive travel and time requirements that risk disenfranchising the county’s most marginalized voters,” the group wrote in a June 23 letter to the county elections board.
The coalition said it hopes the board will adopt a plan “that ensures that voters are able to access their fundamental right to vote.”
Republican-led county election boards across North Carolina are debating how many early-voting sites to open before the November 5 election. The Wake County Board of Elections recently rejected N.C. State University as an early-voting site.
The North Carolina State Board of Elections in January rejected a plan for Columbus County to offer early-voting on a particular Sunday ahead of the primary in March.
The Columbus County Board of Elections will meet at 5 p.m. Monday at 2586 James B. White Highway North, Building B, in Whiteville to discuss its early-voting site plan. The meeting can be accessed virtually via Zoom.