GOP Operative Who Pushed to Cut Early Voting Will Help Oversee North Carolina Elections

A North Carolina GOP operative who tried to limit the state’s crucial early voting period has been named to a key post helping to run the state’s elections. 

It’s the latest step by Tarheel State Republicans to undermine impartial election administration in favor of giving the GOP free rein to restrict voting.

Dallas Woodhouse, who served as executive director of the state GOP from 2015 to 2019, will serve as a liaison to local boards of elections for Auditor Dave Boliek (R), according to a memo sent by Boliek’s office and obtained by the North Carolina journalist Bryan Anderson.

The memo, written to local election administrators, says Woodhouse will “serve as a resource for you in a variety of areas including developing robust early voting plans, election policy, and proper oversight.” 

A spokesperson for Boliek’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In the months before the 2016 election, Woodhouse reportedly emailed Republican county election board members and asked them to “make party line changes to early voting,” which included reducing hours, nixing Sunday voting, and excluding college campuses as polling sites.

“Many of our folks are angry and are opposed to Sunday voting for a host of reasons including respect for voter’s religious preferences, protection of our families and allowing the fine election staff a day off, rather than forcing them to work days on end without time off,” Woodhouse wrote. “Six days of voting in one week is enough. Period.”

Woodhouse also wrote that, “No group of people are entitled to their own early voting site, including college students, who already have more voting options than most other citizens.”

Mecklenburg County, then the largest county in the state, voted to cut early voting hours a day after Woodhouse sent his email to the GOP county election board members — though most of the state’s early voting was ultimately preserved. 

Woodhouse’s appointment marks the latest anti-voting move from Boliek since a Republican-backed law stripped from the state’s Democratic governor the power to appoint state and local board members, and gave it instead to the Republican auditor. 

The Republican majority appointed by Boliek to the state election board quickly ousted the board’s executive director, Karen Brinson Bell — a respected nonpartisan election administrator — and replaced her with Sam Hayes, a GOP operative who served as the top lawyer for the Speaker of the House.

Hayes has since unveiled legislation that would further restrict access to voting.