By Sarah Nagem
Wanda Monroe, the elections director in Bladen County, wasn’t expecting any security threats at the polls this year. But she wanted to be proactive.
“We did have a meeting with all the law enforcement agencies in our county and emergency management teams to discuss safety issues that could arise,” Monroe said.
Chief judges responsible for the county’s voting precincts underwent “extensive training” to look for anything suspicious, including white substances or unexpected packages, she added.
Election officials across rural southeastern North Carolina say they are taking security seriously amid nationwide concerns about threats of violence or unrest related to the Nov. 5 election.
Ashley Collins, the Columbus County Board of Elections director, said her office is working closely with the sheriff’s office so deputies regularly patrol voting sites. In Scotland County, elections director Dell Parker said her office has made some security changes this year, but she declined to discuss them publicly.
While local election officials say they are paying extra attention to safety, they are not taking more drastic measures seen in some other states. Maricopa County, Arizona, added fences, metal detectors and rooftop snipers at its vote-tabulation center after men with rifles gathered outside following the 2020 election. Two months after the election, as President Donald Trump claimed without evidence that the race was stolen from him, rioters gathered at the Capitol in Washington, D.C.
Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Trump are now essentially tied in the race for president, according to most polls. The race is also a toss-up in North Carolina, a crucial battleground state.
In Columbus County, leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties say they have doubled or nearly doubled the number of poll observers ahead of the election in anticipation of harassment or other issues. In North Carolina, county political parties can appoint poll observers to document and report irregularities.
“We’re expecting a little more activity this year,” said Franklin Thurman, chairman of the Columbus County Democratic Party.
Thurman said in an interview on Thursday that early voting has been smooth. One of the few incidents, he said, occurred when a poll worker told a woman she couldn’t use her cellphone while voting. A poll observer stepped in to remind the worker that cellphones are allowed as long as they aren’t used to take photos or videos of marked ballots, Thurman said.
Sammy Hinson, chairman of the Columbus County Republican Party, said he has seen an uptick in the number of people who want to be poll observers.
“Somebody needs to be there to keep their eyes on things,” he said. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
Southeastern North Carolina has a history of voting irregularities. A sting operation in the early 1980s into what federal investigators described as a longstanding system of bid-rigging and vote-buying in the region resulted in the indictments of 40 people. Among them was Columbus County’s R.C. Soles, the longest-serving member of the state General Assembly who died in 2021. Soles was found not guilty.
Former Columbus County Sheriff Jody Greene’s supporters pointed to that investigation, commonly called ColCor — short for Columbus County Corruption — in 2018. Greene’s victory that year was marred by questions about whether he actually lived in the county. The local election board said he was ineligible to serve, but the state Board of Elections disagreed.
Greene won re-election in 2022 weeks after he resigned amid the release of a recorded phone call in which he called deputies “snakes” and “Black bastards.” Local District Attorney also accused him of racial profiling, intimidating county commissioners and having an affair with a subordinate. Greene resigned again, less than two months after his second victory, and is the target of a federal investigation.
In Bladen County, political operative Leslie McCrae Dowless Jr. was accused of gathering hundreds of absentee ballots during the 2018 election when he was working for Republican candidate Mark Harris in the race for the 9th Congressional district. Harris was not charged in the alleged scheme, which resulted in an election do-over, and Dowless died in 2022 before he was expected to go on trial.
In neighboring Robeson County, the race for Pembroke mayor has been ensnared in controversy for years. The state ordered a new election in 2015 after Mayor Greg Cummings raised concerns about irregularities. His opponent, Allen Dial, protested the redo results when Cummings was named the winner, but election officials dismissed his claims of a vote-buying scheme. Dial came out ahead of Cummings by 5 percentage points in the 2023 election, but Cummings’ protests are still making their way through the legal system. In the meantime, Cummings continues to serve as mayor.
Lacy Cummings, a candidate who lost to Robeson County commissioner Judy Sampson in the March primary, accused Sampson and commissioner Wixie Stephens of bribing 21 voters. The local and state election boards denied Lacy Cummings’ election protest, saying he lacked evidence of voting irregularities, and he appealed to Wake County County Superior Court. Sampson and Stephens have denied any wrongdoing, and both are running unopposed in the Nov. 5 election.
Thurman and Hinson both pointed to political divisiveness as a reason to be more cautious than ever when it comes to election security.
Thurman blamed Trump. “If we ever get Donald Trump out of the way,” he said, “I think that the divisiveness will go away. He’s responsible for a lot of it.”
Hinson blamed what he described as Democrats’ focus on race, sexuality and other factors that separate people into groups. “The Democratic party has done a good job the past few years of making us divisive, in my humble opinion,” he said.
Both said they were pleased with one thing: voter turnout. More than 2 million North Carolina voters had cast ballots as of Thursday, according to the state Board of Elections.
Elections directors in Bladen, Columbus and Scotland counties said the only complaints they’ve received are about long lines at early voting sites — a good problem to have, they said, because it means lots of people are voting.
Monroe said Bladen County’s election staff is working around the clock to ensure a smooth election. She said the job is stressful but rewarding. The biggest reward, she said, is “the satisfaction of knowing that you put on an honest election with integrity.”
Still, Monroe recognizes the potential for unrest. “It can happen everywhere,” she said.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated Wanda Monroe’s name in some references.
