New Hanover Board of Elections criticized over early voting location
NEW HANOVER COUNTY, NC (WWAY) — This year’s municipal election is causing some concern in New Hanover County after the county board of elections announced it will only open one early voting location.
Last week, the New Hanover County Board of Elections announced the Northeast Library off Eastwood Rd. will be the only early location for this year’s election.
County Commissioner LeAnn Pierce took to social media to criticize the decision, saying that after a budget increase and a new $5.6 million dollar building, there should be more than one location.
Pierce also claims any cost to open another location would be reimbursed by the municipality hosting it.
She feels having just one location limits how many people can make it to the voting booth.
“Not everybody is able to come out on election day,” Pierce expressed. “They may have travel, they may have work. We need to allow as much time, and as much ability and accessibility as possible for folks to be able to vote.”
New Hanover County NAACP President LeRon Montgomery also criticized the decision, noting it excludes people who don’t have easy access to transportation—especially people in downtown Wilmington.
“A lot of people in the city, they walk different places, use public transportation. So, we’re hoping that they’ll move it within the downtown area where those in the city can have the access to vote and wont have that barrier of transportation,” Montgomery said.
Pierce says the Board of Elections asked the city of Wilmington if it would need an early voting location, but claims the city never responded.
“There was no response to their email, so that I have a problem with,” she said.” I don’t understand why they did not request an early voting location in Wilmington.”
WWAY reached out to Wilmington City Clerk Penny Spicer-Sidbury about that early voting request and whether the city received it, but we have not heard back as of Monday evening.
WWAY also reached out to Board of Elections Director Rae Hunter-Havens, who told us while the county did increase their budget, that’s because there are two elections for this fiscal year—rather than one. So, even though the board of elections received more funding, it still lost more than $260,000 in operating costs.
The full statement sent to WWAY reads:
“The FY25/26 requested budget was higher than the FY24/25 budget because there are two scheduled elections in this fiscal year, unlike FY24/25 when there was one scheduled election. This would explain why the requested budget for FY25/26 is larger than the previous fiscal year.
Additionally, the FY25/26 approved budget requires a reduction of $261,490 from our requested continuation budget. We are receiving approximately a quarter of a million dollars less than we need to conduct both the 2025 Municipal and 2026 Primary Elections as we have traditionally planned.
Lastly, the municipalities reimburse the county for conducting the municipal elections. Each additional voting site will cost taxpayers more money.”
The board of elections will meet again on August 6. Those on the board tell WWAY they’ll likely reconsider only having one early voting location.
