When the people who run our elections would rather fewer of us showed up (and won’t say so where we can hear it, as when board member Hewitt moved to take the discussion “behind closed doors”), we get a few days here, a site there, a discouraging quiet everywhere, until the electorate is smaller and the choices are made farther away.
Last week, the Rowan County Board of Elections weighed how many days of early voting to offer in 2026. Every resident allowed to speak asked for the most generous plan. The Republican majority swiftly refused and then voted away any discussion of why. The decision now likely goes to Raleigh, just as board member Leatherman said he preferred.
Why have a county board? A board exists because the people who live here know this county: its work schedules, its churches, its bus routes. Letting Raleigh make the choice is not local control. It is elected officials asking to be governed from afar, the “small government” crowd feeding the very centralization it claims to fear.
Who is served by the most generous early voting plan? The nurse off back-to-back 12-hour shifts; the grandmother who can only get a Sunday ride; the young worker with no paid time for a Tuesday line. Every day cut takes a subset of our neighbors with it, silenced for no reason any dissenting board member was brave enough to voice.
This goes far beyond Rowan County. In Raleigh, lawmakers are advancing House Bill 958, which would bar election officials from encouraging people to vote at all. An office built to run our elections, forbidden to invite us into them, sends one message: your participation is tolerated, not desired.
When the people who run our elections would rather fewer of us showed up (and won’t say so where we can hear it, as when board member Hewitt moved to take the discussion “behind closed doors”), we get a few days here, a site there, a discouraging quiet everywhere, until the electorate is smaller and the choices are made farther away.
Will a critical mass rise while the direction is still ours to change or let silence spread?
— Erin FitzPatrick