NC elections director fired as new GOP majority takes control calling for 'trust in the election system'

Within minutes of taking control of the State Board of Elections on Wednesday, the board's new Republican majority fired and replaced the state election director.

Karen Brinson Bell was appointed under the oversight of former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper to lead the board in 2019 and has stayed on under the leadership of new Gov. Josh Stein, also a Democratic. But Republican state lawmakers succeeded last week in their nearly decade-long quest to shift the board into Republican control, and away from the governor's office.

The new GOP majority wasted no time in pushing for a shakeup in leadership. Within minutes of being sworn in Monday the board's new members named Sam Hayes, currently the top lawyer for Republican House Speaker Destin Hall, as the new elections director.

Bell wrote in a statement, provided to WRAL just before the new board members were sworn in Monday morning, that she wanted to continue on in the role but was informed she won't be returning.

In her statement, Brinson Bell credited the state's professional election workers for carrying out their jobs "under incredibly difficult circumstances and in a toxic political environment that has targeted election professionals with harassment and threats ... villified by those who don't like the outcome."

It's common for politics to play a role in who leads the elections board. But it doesn't always happen so quickly, or in such a publicly acrimonious display.

When Republican Gov. Pat McCrory took office, he replaced Democratic-appointed elections director Gary Bartlett with a Republican, Kim Strach. After Cooper beat McCrory he allowed Strach to remain in office for two years before firing her in 2019 and putting Brinson Bell in charge.

On Wednesday Senate leader Phil Berger, a Republican who has led the push to change laws giving his party control over elections, said he was glad to see Brinson Bell ousted. She had recently accused Berger of stoking false election fraud claims that she said could lead to violence.

"She was a partisan actor when she was put in that place, and she acted on a partisan manner all along," Berger said. "And so I am hopeful that the change we've made will see decisions made by the board based on what the law is, not what the board thinks the law should be."

Berger's Democratic counterpart, Senate minority leader Sen. Sydney Batch, said she has little faith that the board's new GOP leadership will conduct itself in anything other than an overtly partisan manner, given comments by the board's new leadership as well as their GOP allies in the state legislature.

"Not everything has to have a partisan frame," Batch said. "I understand that's what some individuals feel like it's their entire mission to do — to come here and throw red meat at their base — and in my opinion, what they're doing is screaming and hollering and being very petulant. But at the end of the day, North Carolinians deserve better."

New board chair

Also on Wednesday, the board on named Francis De Luca as its new chairman. A conservative activist who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2019, De Luca also previously led the Civitas Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank funded by NCGOP megadonor Art Pope that's now called the John Locke Foundation.

The board's two remaining Democratic members, Siobhan Millen and Jeff Carmon, questioned the wisdom of that decision. They said the better choice to lead the board would've been Stacy "Four" Eggers IV, a Republican attorney from Boone who has served on the elections board for years and who they said they appreciated as an experienced and professional colleague, despite occassional political disagreements.

"You know what we've been through and what's on the forefront for us," Carmon told Eggers. "So I think you'd be the perfect person — or, the perfect Republican person — to guide us these next few years."

Eggers thanked Carmon but said he's ready to put his faith in De Luca to take charge. De Luca, in a brief statement after winning the 3-2 vote to be named chair, indicated he doesn't believe elections in North Carolina have been fair in the past and that under his leadership the new elections board will have "a little bit of a busy time ahead."

The vote to make De Luca chair came down along party lines with the Democrats opposed and the Republicans, who also include former state Sen. Bob Rucho, in the majority.

"My aim is that we get things so that we have fair elections, making voting easy, and making sure we follow the law and ensure there's trust in the election system," De Luca said.

Toward the end of Wednesday's meeting Brinson Bell asked permission to make a short speech. De Luca said no and ended the meeting. Brinson Bell stayed in the hearing room to speak with reporters and other members of the public gathered there. The board's Democratic members also stayed for her speech.

In that speech Brinson Bell lauded the work of state and county elections officials around the state and warned against what she framed as politically motivated efforts to falsely cast doubts on the validity of election results.

"I hope we return to a time when those who lose elections concede defeat, rather than trying to tear down the entire election system and erode voter confidence," she said. "And I hope we recognize that the conduct of elections is the very core of our democracy and should be properly and consistently funded — regardless of the party or the person in control — so that the voice of the people can be recorded accurately, securely and fairly right."

The elections board has won national awards under Brinson Bell's tenure, including an honor last month from the U.S. Election Assisstance Commission for its work getting polling places back up and running in western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene devastated the area in the middle of 2024 voting.

But she has faced criticism from Republican politicians for some actions, most notably a decision in 2020 to extend the deadline for mail-in ballots to come in after the election, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Republicans began turning against mail-in voting in 2020 due to President Donald Trump, who has falsely blamed mail-in voting fraud on his election loss that year.

The elections board doesn't write the state's election laws. But the state board, as well as all 100 county boards that will now also switch is in charge of enforcing those laws and running investigations into allegations of voter fraud, campaign finance violations and other misdeeds. It also makes administration decisions, such as the location and hours of early voting sites or which types of photo IDs can be used.

For most of the last 125 years the elections board has been set up with five members: Three from the political party of the governor, and two from the state's next-biggest political party. Republican state lawmakers have tried changing that ever since 2016 when Cooper defeated McCrory, and have now succeeded.

Many of the legislature's efforts to change it in the last decade have been ruled unconstitutional or rejected at the ballot box by voters. But earlier this month an anonymous panel of judges on the Republican-controlled N.C. Court of Appeals ruled that the latest effort to give Republicans control of the board — by transferring control to the state auditor's office, held by Republican Dave Boliek — should be allowed to go forward.

Stein has appealed the Court of Appeals' decision to shake up the elections board, which came in a sparse, two-sentence-long ruling with no explanation for why the judges disagreed with a trial court panel that had ruled the GOP-backed changes to the board were unconstitutional.

However, the Republican-controlled State Supreme Court has so far declined to step in and pause the shift in elections administration to GOP control while Stein's appeal plays out.