More resignations, please

Auditor Dave Boliek is undermining trust in our election system.

The ballots aren’t even counted yet, and the first Republican has resigned from the North Carolina State Board of Elections. Former state Senator Bob Rucho stepped down after making campaign donations to two sheriff’s candidates in violation of state law. Rucho was already under fire for making posts on social media that indicated he supported his old boss and colleague Phil Berger in a race the senate president pro-tem lost by two votes to Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page.

First, let me say I’m glad Rucho resigned and that Auditor Dave Boliek and SBOE Chair Francis De Luca accepted. It was the right thing to do. It’s far from enough.

Rucho’s very appointment cast doubt on the judgment of the whole operation and reminds everybody, or at least should, of why the organization has a trust problem. Bob Rucho should never have been on the board in the first place. He was the primary architect of the gerrymandered districts drawn in 2016 that led to the lawsuit known as Rucho v. Common Cause that allows states to use partisan gerrymandering. In other words, he was rigging elections almost a decade before he was appointed to oversee them.

In appointing Rucho, Boliek showed poor judgment if he wanted to instill confidence in the state board of elections. Unfortunately, I don’t think he or his Republican colleagues care about public trust. They treated the control of our election system as political spoils.

The only reason Boliek has oversight of the SBOE is because Phil Berger and House Speaker Destin Hall gave it to him after Josh Stein won the governor’s election in 2024. Then, a complicit and compliant state Supreme Court upheld the move despite a similar maneuver being found unconstitutional by another court. They see the board of elections as a partisan advantage, not a public service.

Rucho is not Boliek’s only bad hire. He appointed Francis X. De Luca to chair the state board of elections. De Luca, former president of the Art Pope-funded Civitas Institute, has long supported voter suppression efforts that restrict access to the ballot box. In 2016, he filed a lawsuit to disqualify 90,000 voters who registered using same-day registration after Roy Cooper defeated Pat McCrory.

De Luca and Civitas were major supporters of the so-called “monster voter suppression” bill struck down because it targeted African American voters with “surgical precision.” After the decision, Phil Berger and then-House Speaker Tim Moore released a statement that accused the judge of allowing “Roy Cooper and Hillary Clinton to steal the election.” In a classic Orwellian twist, the people who rigged elections through extreme gerrymandering and attempted to shape the electorate by denying people access to the ballot accused the courts of trying to “steal” the election.

And the problems just continue. The board hired former executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party Dallas Woodhouse as liaison to county boards of election. In 2016, when he led the GOP, Woodhouse sent an email to members of those same county election boards urging them to restrict early voting sites by using “party line” changes.

The people overseeing our elections have been trying to give Republicans an electoral advantage for more than a decade.

As for Boliek, he was in Rockingham County campaigning for Phil Berger before the primary. He’s tried to deflect criticism by saying that governors campaigned for people when the SBOE was under their office. The difference is that Phil Berger gave Boliek that authority just over a year ago. Sound judgment should have told him to stay out of that primary.

And that’s the problem. The primary on Tuesday was the first statewide election his SBOE has overseen. He hasn’t earned anybody’s credibility or confidence yet. On the contrary, he’s left doubts about his judgment and commitment to fair elections. If he’s willing to go to bat for Republicans in a primary, imagine what he will do to Democrats in a general election.

Boliek had an opportunity to begin to restore trust in our institutions. He could have hired election professionals to oversee the state board of elections. He could have stayed as far away from elections as possible, at least until he earned the people’s trust.

Instead, he hired campaign operatives to run the board of elections and inserted himself into the most expensive, controversial, and consequential primary in modern North Carolina history. Those moves don’t only undermine his judgment, they bring into question his motives. Unfortunately, I don’t think he cares.

Ever since Republicans took control of the North Carolina legislature in 2011, they’ve been trying to give Republicans an unfair advantage in elections. They pioneered the extreme gerrymandering that now has their colleagues in other states crying foul, tried to limit access to the polls for African Americans, and, in 2024, attempted to change the rules of the election after the fact. They’ve become an anti-democratic party undermining a democratic system.

To regain the trust he has squandered, Boliek should demand more resignations. I’m not holding my breath.