RALEIGH — During its meeting last week, the North Carolina State Board of Elections voted to end Sunday early voting in some counties as well as early in-person voting sites at a handful of colleges and universities.
The board approved Guilford County’s plan for early voting sites in a 3-2 vote along party lines. The decision upheld the county’s exclusion of Washington Terrace Park as a site even though that location was utilized from 2012 to 2024, with one exception in 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The current North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) makeup is three Republicans and two Democrats.
Nearly all the state’s 100 counties have unanimously set their early voting plans, leaving the NCSBE to deal with around a dozen counties where the vote was not unanimous. Those actions included the board voting 3-2 to eliminate early voting hours on Sundays in five counties: Brunswick, Columbus, Craven, Harnett and Wayne.
Under state law, the state board has final authority when county boards fail to reach unanimous agreement on such plans.
“I don’t think we should be voting on Sunday,” NCSBE Chair Francis De Luca said. “I know a lot of people who do nothing on Sunday because that’s the Lord’s day.”
“I just find that outrageous,” Democrat member Siobhan Millen said, claiming the change was going against the wishes of the chairs of local boards related to Sunday early voting.
The college sites impacted by the voting site changes included Elon, North Carolina A&T, UNC Greensboro and Western Carolina. The vote was 3-2 down party lines, with reasons for the change such as parking availability, site logistical issues and other polling sites located nearby.
Board member Jeff Carmon, a Democrat, opposed the change, stressing the importance of campus sites for student engagement.
Students from North Carolina A&T (NC A&T) were apparently bused in to protest at the meeting, based on social media posts.
Multiple posts about attending the NCSBE meeting were made by various Instagram accounts, such as “Legaldaze” and NC A&T student Shia Rozier. Those posts were promoted by an Instagram account called “Influence NC,” which also posted a video of students protesting at the meeting. The posts included offers of roundtrip transportation to the meeting via charter buses that departed from the Willie A. Deese Clocktower on the NC A&T campus.
Influence NC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
NC A&T students also appeared at the Guilford County Board of Elections meeting held on Nov. 18.
Influence NC, which is called the “Influence NC Collective” on its website, is linked to the left-leaning activist group Carolina Forward, according to its recruitment form. The form touts paid positions of up to “$50 per hour,” networking with “top NC creators” and flexible hours of “only 10 hours monthly, completely remote,” running from Feb. 1 until the end of May.
Carolina Forward is described as “an independent, non-partisan, non-profit policy organization that advocates for ideas, policies, and values to build a stronger North Carolina that works for all its people.”
According to Influence NC’s website, the group is a 501(c)3 launched on Oct. 1 and gets funding from Carolina Forward and the Feinglos Fund, described as “dedicated to North Carolina-based and nationwide grantmaking that empowers women and girls, advances educational opportunities, strengthens democracy, and expands access to grief support.”
The Feinglos Fund was founded by certified grief support specialist Rebecca Feinglos.
North State Journal was unable to locate IRS filings or North Carolina Secretary of State records for Influence NC and Feinglos Fund. The only tax-related filing found for Feinglos Fund was under the Durham Public Schools Foundation, where Feinglos’s name was listed as a board member.
The Influence NC’s donations page shows it collects donations through Carolina Forward’s Act Blue account.
Influence NC’s donation page says the group was launched to bridge a gap in “independent media” and “social media” in order to “equip North Carolinians with the tools and training they need to share reliable, pro-democracy information in their own communities and do some storytelling.”
Act Blue is the main fundraising platform for the Democratic Party and has been under investigation by Congress for accepting fraudulent and illegal donations, as well as money from foreign sources.
Last March, California Republican Congressman Darrell Issa asked the Treasury Department to investigate Act Blue for potentially having accepted money from terror-linked organizations.
Early voting for the March 3 primary election is already underway.
Absentee ballot mailings began going out Feb. 12, and due to changes in state law removing a three-day grace period after Election Day, absentee ballots must now be received by the voter’s county board of election by 7:30 p.m. on March 3.
Early in-person voting statewide for the March primary will end at 3 p.m. on Feb. 28. Citizens can register to vote until Feb. 6.
Information on voting and other resources can be found at NCSBE.gov.
