Plan C was the plan that 50+ people showed up to advocate for and others emailed about. NOTE: If the Republicans had been allowed to shave an hour from each workday, they would not only have made voting more difficult for working people, the new Republican majority would have removed 12 available hours from the weekday voting calendar while also proposing to remove 7 hours by eliminating an additional Saturday or 5 hours by doing away with Sunday voting. Whatever the Republican Plan, the goal seems to reduce the number of voting hours to the bare minimum for ALL voters.
Following the coverage of the Early Voting process from the Salisbury Post, we include Post links to three interesting letters to the editor.
State to Decide Rowan County Early Voting Schedule after Local Board of Elections Deadlocked
SALISBURY — The state will decide the schedule for early voting after the members of the Rowan County Board of Elections were unable to come to a unanimous decision on Wednesday.
Every year, the early voting schedule for the upcoming election is decided by the members of the local board of elections. However, if the members are unable to unanimously agree on a plan, the issue goes to the N.C. Board of Elections.
Sharon Main, director of the Rowan County Board of Elections, wrote in an email on Monday that she had not received any indication of when the state meeting would be held.
The matter in question was originally how many Saturdays and how many Sundays early voting should be open during the voting period of Oct. 16 through Nov. 1. State law requires that the county hold the polling location open during “regular business hours” five days a week during the early voting period and on the final Saturday until 3 p.m.
Rowan County’s only polling place for early voting in municipal elections is the Board of Elections office, located in the Rowan Community Center, formerly the West End Plaza, at 1935 Jake Alexander Blvd. W.
The original vote on Wednesday was on a motion by Republican board member Elaine Hewitt, who moved to approve Plan A, which only included the state-required dates, with the modification that the ending time for the weekdays be moved from 7 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Hewitt said that her reasoning was that there is little voting during municipal elections after 5 p.m., but she did not want to be that restrictive on the voting times. Republican board member John Leatherman agreed, with both pointing to the 2023 election, when 19 people voted between the hours of 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. throughout the period.
The vote for modified Plan A failed along party lines, as Democrats Catrelia Hunter and Kenneth Stutts voted no.
Stutts then motioned to approve Plan C as presented, without the modified weekday times, which included two extra days: Saturday, Oct. 18, and Sunday, Oct. 19. That motion similarly failed along party lines, with Republicans Hewitt, Leatherman and Board Chair Dave Collins voting no.
Following the two motions, which effectively established the two sides, Main offered up the staff perspective based on the data, stating that Plan C has worked well for the county after being implemented multiple times in recent years. However, she said that the staff would appreciate rolling back the end time to 6 p.m. so that they were spending less hours in the office “when nobody is showing up.”
Hewitt said that she personally supported Sunday options more than Saturdays, with both her and Leatherman pointing to data from recent years showing that people show up more on Sundays and later in the early voting period. Her compromise option was for a modified Plan B, including the reduction of weekdays to 6 p.m. and replacing Saturday, Oct. 18, with Sunday, Oct. 26. She said that wanted to move the Saturday date back to keep the voting open for seven straight days, hoping to make the plan as simple as possible.
“When you only have 19 people vote in the whole time in 2023, to me it’s not cost-effective. Everyone can assume that we just spend money and it doesn’t matter, but any money we spend that’s not spent well is money that’s not going to the schools, not going to the other agencies. I think we do have to be good stewards of the money and I think people have enough opportunity to vote that they will find the time to vote, whether it’s by absentee ballot, Election Day or early voting,” said Hewitt.
However, Hunter and Stutts refused to agree to reducing the time during weekdays and both voted no.
“I still have a problem with changing that to 6 p.m. as opposed to the 7 p.m. that is listed. I would be reluctant to think that we have gone above and beyond (in past years) to serve the people because that is what we’re here to do,” said Hunter.
Stutts added that “6 o’clock is not late enough for many people my age that work. I don’t usually roll back in town and I’ve walked into voting at 6:45 before. I understand your argument, but there are so many people that work outside the county who live here and they want to participate and I do think 6 o’clock is not late enough.”
Hunter then moved to implement the modified plan as Hewitt presented, only keeping the time at the initial 7 p.m. on weekdays. However, Hewitt and Leatherman voted no.
Hunter then presented another potential compromise, with a modified Plan C including both Saturdays and the Sunday but moving the weekday times to 6 p.m. However, Hewitt said she disagreed with implementing an extra Saturday and both her and Leatherman voted no.
That is where the deadlock remained at the end of the agenda item. Main said that this is the first time the board has been unable to reach a unanimous decision since 2021. When the NCSBE sets the scheduled meeting to consider Rowan County’s plan, Main said that the two parties will each send a member to present their plan for the early voting schedule before the state board, who will make the final decision. However, the state board is not bound to those two plans and can implement anything between the minimum and maximum amount allowable.
We Have to Be Better – Jason Higgins, China Grove
Nearly every year at the August Town Council meeting, I get up and say a few words about the racism that is allowed to be displayed at Farmer’s Day. Every year, I feel like it falls on deaf ears. This year, there were two booths flying the Confederate flag, and one of them happened to be giving out free fans to folks so our town was covered from one end to the other with people carrying around a flag that represents treason and slavery…
…It cannot be welcoming to anyone that is not white to come to China Grove and see a flag that represents so much hate from one end of the town to the other. It’s only been 46 years since this town allowed the KKK to show a movie at the community building. We have to be better, like it or not this town is changing and growing. This is not the South of the ’50s/’60s/’70s. Please try and do something about the blatant racism that you’re allowing to continue at the festival.
Read the entire letter at: https://www.salisburypost.com/2025/08/10/letter-we-have-to-be-better/
No Justice – Eileen Hanson-Kelly
There is no justice when an innocent man is behind bars. Many of us have seen how wrongful convictions impact all of us — tearing families apart, destroying trust in our legal system, and leaving innocent people to rot in prison while the true criminal remains at large to harm others. One such case has come to my attention recently — that of James Richardson in Pitt County. On June 30, 2009, a shooting in Greenville, NC, took the lives of two innocent men. Without any forensic or eyewitness evidence linking James to the crime, on July 4, 2009, he was arrested and charged with the double homicide. James had no previous criminal record…
Read the letter at: https://www.salisburypost.com/2025/08/07/letter-no-justice/
Wrongfully Convicted: Patricia W. Sledge
Three men in Greenville, N.C., have been wrongly convicted…. Two have been exonerated. One remains in prison after 16 years. As an advocate for Justice for All, I am concerned that James Richardson has spent over 16 years behind bars for a crime he did not commit. New evidence, suppressed during his original trial, confirms that the case against him was built on altered video, false testimony and an impossible theory. Yet he remains incarcerated while innocent…
Read more at: https://www.salisburypost.com/2025/08/07/letter-wrongfully-convicted/