For the first time ever, the Sampson County Board of Elections is a four-person group and leading the new-look board will be Democrat Horace Bass, the longest-tenured member.
Bass has served on the Sampson County Board of Elections for nearly seven years, appointed on July 28, 2011. He has served under five different chairs in that time. This is his first stint as the leader of the board, and he will be guiding a four-person panel, a bipartisan look ushered in with changes at the state level.
Along with Bass, the reorganized Sampson County Board of Elections includes fellow Democrat G.H. Wilson, a newcomer to the board, and Republicans Danny Jackson and Quincy Edgerton, previously a part of a three-member board with Bass. Members unanimously voted Bass as chair and Jackson as vice-chair during a short meeting Monday.
The board is expected to remain this way until July, potentially July 2019, Sampson elections director Ashley Tew noted.
“When I came on, I was a precinct chief judge. I took James Hall’s place on the board,” said Bass, who has served under chairmen Ted Lockerman, Dwight Williams Jr., Sylvia Thornton, Jackie Hall and Jackson. “I’ve been around quite some time.”
The bipartisan State Board of Elections & Ethics Enforcement is the state agency charged with the administration of the elections process, as well as campaign finance, ethics and lobbying disclosure and compliance. The agency, created last year by the General Assembly, resulted from the merger of the former State Board of Elections, State Ethics Commission and the Lobbying Compliance Division of the Secretary of State’s Office.
The agency is overseen by a nine-member board — four Democrats, four Republicans and a member not affiliated with either of those parties. Lawmakers rolled class size funding, elections and ethics board issues and Atlantic Coast Pipeline funding into one bill, prompting Gov. Roy Cooper to seek a preliminary injunction against Part 8 of HB90.
The Democratic governor has sued GOP legislative leaders three times over legislation creating different versions of the joint board. The first lawsuit was filed in December 2016, just before Cooper got sworn in.
The governor’s office issued a statement on March 14 indicating that he would be appointing the state board.
“We believe strongly that this third attempt by the legislature in HB90 to rig the Board of Elections and limit people’s right to vote is unconstitutional and we will continue pursuing our case,” a Governor’s Office comment, issued by Ford Porter, spokesman for Governor Roy Cooper, read. “However, the case is likely to take months and it is important to have a board in place for the time being to administer the upcoming elections.”
Republicans criticized Cooper for the extensive litigation. Cooper won the first two lawsuits over versions that created an eight-member board comprised of four Democrats and four Republicans. He sued a third time, arguing the nine-member board — now with an additional member who can’t be registered with a major party — and other provisions still prevents him from having control over carrying out elections laws.
Bass said, despite changes at the state that dictate that counties now have equal party representation on the board, he feels at ease with the dynamic on Sampson’s board.
“I feel comfortable because everything is running smoothly,” said Bass. “We work together and that’s the way I would like to keep it. I don’t see that we wouldn’t be able to come up with a a consensus.”
If cases of a stalemate, local issues would go to the state commission.
That state board, administering elections and campaign finance laws, stood vacant nearly a year while the constitutionality of the combination board was litigated. While election board staff performed their duties, policy decisions got delayed and contested municipal election results had to be settled by judges.
Since the latest lawsuit is likely to take months, “it is important to have a board in place for the time being to administer the upcoming elections,” Cooper spokesman Ford Porter said in a release coinciding with his appointment of the nine-member board.
The lack of a sitting board also meant boards of elections in a quarter of the state’s 100 counties currently don’t have enough members to conduct business, such as approving early-voting sites for the May 8 primary elections. That’s because the state board appoints county board members.
Tew said that was not an issue in Sampson County, as the board stayed intact.
For more than a century until the late 2016 law, the majority of seats on the state elections board had been allocated to members of the sitting governor’s party. Cooper sought a return to that, noting that he cannot ensure election laws are carried out if less than a majority of members hold his views.
Republican lawmakers have said having a bipartisan board is the better way to make election decisions.
Cooper appoints all nine members under the new format, but he can only name up to eight initially from lists of six nominees each provided by the state Democratic and Republican parties. Cooper names the ninth from two recommendations made by the other eight members once they are seated.
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