A North Carolina county is losing its 2 top election officials weeks before balloting begins

ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. (AP) — A North Carolina county will soon lose its top two election administrators mere weeks before the first general election ballots go out to voters.

The elections board in Pasquotank County, along the Virginia border about 170 miles (274 kilometers) northeast of Raleigh, this week accepted the resignation of Deputy Director Troy White, The Daily Advance of Elizabeth City reported.

White’s departure is effective Aug. 16, the same day that the resignation of Director Emma Tate takes effect. The upcoming departure of Tate was made public last month.

Tate, who has served as permanent director since early 2020, told the newspaper that she decided to resign “for a multitude of reasons.”

“I just decided it was time to move on,” she added.

White declined to comment about the reasons for his resignation after Tuesday’s board meeting that confirmed his departure.

The departures emphasize a turnover problem among local election directors over the past presidential election cycle in North Carolina and other states.

Pasquotank County has about 31,000 registered voters, compared with nearly 7.6 million recorded statewide. While in-person early voting for the Nov. 5 election begins Oct. 17, county boards will begin sending absentee ballots to those who have requested them on Sept. 6.

“Obviously, this is a difficult situation with fewer than 100 days before the election and a little more than a month before absentee ballots must be sent out,” State Board of Elections spokesman Patrick Gannon said. The state board will help the county as it works to fill the positions as soon as possible, he added.

In recent weeks, the five-member Pasquotank County board worked out with the state board how many early voting sites in the county would be open this fall.

In April, state elections Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell described to a General Assembly elections oversight committee staffing concerns within the state’s 100 counties. She said at the time that there had been 60 director changes since 2019, and that this year would mark the first presidential election in a permanent director’s role for at least 28 county directors.

Brinson Bell cited in part an environment in which “election professionals have faced continued hostility, harassment, substantial changes in their workload and the demands on them.”

Staffing has long been a challenge for election offices nationally, but 2020 was a tipping point with the pandemic-related challenges before the presidential vote and the hostility afterward driven by false claims of a rigged election. Other politically important states have also seen considerable turnover. For instance, 11 of Nevada’s 17 counties have had turnover in top county election positions since the 2020 election.