Today, a new State Board of Elections is slated to be appointed, which means forward movement on who will represent North Carolina in the 9^th Congressional District in the U.S. Congress. It also means county boards of elections will get their boards back.

In October 2018, a three-judge panel determined the state’s combined nine-member state Board of Elections and Ethics was unconstitutional and ordered a five-person elections board and eight-person ethics board be reinstated. A month later, allegations of voter fraud in Bladen and Robeson counties, in a tight race between 9^th Congressional District candidates Mark Harris and Dan McCready, escalated into an investigation by the board. However, after several requests for extension, the court finally dissolved the board on Dec. 28 in the midst of the active investigation. Gov. Roy Cooper ordered an interim board be seated, but the North Carolina GOP passed a law only allowing Cooper to appoint members to a new board, not an interim board. That law goes into effect today.

“(Session Law 2018-146) transferred all active investigations to the new board … which takes office on 1/31. There is no authority for any interim board of any sort to take any action at all,” N.C. Representative David Lewis tweeted on Dec. 28.

The delay in assigning the new state board of elections has prevented resolution in the 9^th District, and it’s also meant counties have been operating without their own boards of elections. The same law also expanded county boards from three members to five: two Democrats, two Republicans and a chairman of the board appointed by the governor.

In the past several years, counties’ board of elections numbers have risen from three to four, and now to five.

According to Kellie Hopkins, Beaufort County Board of Elections director, the lack of a board hasn’t been such an issue because of the timing.

“This is a good time for that to happen, if there is a good time — I’ll put it that way,” Hopkins said. “We had our elections sewn up, and everything was final, and there were no issues.”

That it’s an odd year and there are no spring primaries means there’s time to seat a new five-member board before things start heating up again in the summer, Hopkins said. However, as with last year’s state mandate to increase hours at early voting sites, at a cost of $33,000 to the county that was not budgeted, the change to the board’s number will likely mean more unexpected costs to the county in the form of out-of-town trainings and other expenses.

Hopkins said she has not heard, at this point, how the members of the board will be nominated, nor when a new Beaufort County board will be appointed.