For three weeks, the Pasquotank Board of Elections and its sole remaining full-time employee, elections clerk Mary Morris, scrambled to fill the leadership vacuum.
On Sept. 6, 60 days before Election Day, Janae Hedgepeth was sworn in as the replacement director. While Hedgepeth previously worked as an elections official administrative assistant in Hertford County, this will be her first election at the helm.
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Before her is a daunting task — lead a small team of elections officials through the wide variety of elections duties, which includes printing, proofing and mailing out absentee ballots, checking campaign finance reports, securing voting equipment, training poll workers, answering the public’s questions and processing voter registrations — all on strict deadlines while learning the job in real time herself.
“I call it beautiful chaos,” she said.
Hedgepeth is one of at least 30 elections directors in North Carolina’s 100 counties who will oversee their first presidential election this year, according to State Board of Elections Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell.
Many of these directors have been through at least one primary election or municipal election, but the 2024 general election brings new obstacles and a higher level of scrutiny and pressure.
In Pasquotank County, the deputy director position has not yet been filled. However, Hedgepeth isn’t stuck on negativity, and neither are many of the other county elections directors in her position. Instead, in the face of a steep learning curve, they’re leaning on the state and each other.
Hedgepeth said she likes the “hustle and bustle” of the job, and is getting the hang of things a few weeks after starting. The State Board of Elections is helping, which relieves some of the pressure, and other county elections directors have been more than willing to answer her questions.
Currituck County elections director Kimberly Twine, who started a week before the 2024 primary elections, gave some advice to new directors like Hedgepeth: “hold on tight and enjoy the ride.”
NC directors prepare for first presidential election
South of Pasquotank County, Jessica Taylor is also getting used to her brand new job as Jones County elections director.
Taylor took over Sept. 16, 50 days before Election Day. She left her job as a tax administrator in Carteret County because she enjoys working in local government and saw the position as an opportunity to serve the community where she grew up.
She doesn’t have specific elections experience, but Brinson Bell said that is becoming increasingly common among newer elections directors. There isn’t a particular college degree that leads to working in elections, and as turnover rises nationwide, there’s a smaller pool of qualified candidates to choose from, she said.
Brinson Bell now advises county boards to focus on finding people with skill sets like logistics, public relations, crisis management and critical thinking.
For example, Twine had a background in news, not elections, but she was used to long nights covering elections, meeting short deadlines, managing a lot of information, responding to the public and explaining complex processes, Brinson Bell said.
“I’ve had to have conversations with county board members that you may not find someone with elections experience, or very limited elections experience,” she said.
Currituck County was “in full speed, in full election mode” when Twine started in January 2024.
“Walking in with little elections experience, it was challenging at times because the person at the time serving as the deputy director had not really ever had any training to take over the director’s position, and she was not interested in the position, so we both basically were learning everything that we could together,” Twine said.
“As stressful as it was, it was great in the sense that there was constant support from the state, both by phone and by email, but also in person.”
While the State Board offers assistance by answering help desk questions from elections officials, constantly communicating updates and sending regional field support specialists for on-the-ground guidance, their resources are stretched thin.
“We can never be the solution,” she said. “And that’s what we often have to work with the county boards about, is identifying people who have worked, maybe as temps, or people who have been early voting workers (to help).”
In Jones County, that includes Jennifer King, the former elections director who has stayed on with the county in a different role where she oversees multiple departments.
Taylor said there are also “a wealth of online resources and tools” available, daily email communications with the State Board and weekly virtual meetings to share updates and resources. She’s met with her region’s field support specialist and peers from nearby Craven, Lenoir and Pamlico counties.
“I wouldn’t say there are obstacles, just milestones and deadlines that must be met between now and Election Day,” Taylor said. “…The Jones County Elections Office is very organized and I feel confident in our ability to provide an efficient and fair election process for our citizens.”
Field support specialists step up, where they can
The weekend before Amanda Allen stepped into her role as Jackson County elections director, she worked a shift as a precinct official.
It was February, a week before this year’s primary elections. Allen had been a precinct worker for years and worked her way up to chief judge.
“Just like when you transition into any other job, it’s kind of like drinking from a fire hose. And even if you start before an election, until you experience it, you may not know exactly how it’s going to be,” she said.
In Jackson County, there was a second primary, so now, Allen is heading into her third election in seven months. She said she can never be prepared enough.
“Each one of them had unique circumstances, so I haven’t had the chance to learn a consistent thing over and over again, because they’ve been different types of elections, different circumstances, different turnaround times, anticipated different volumes of voters,” she said. “So I’m a little anxious because it’s different, but I have had some of that training.”
A key part of Allen’s support system through her transition was John Noce, one of five field support specialists stationed across the state. Specialists support day-to-day operations in their assigned counties and make sure that counties are complying with federal and state law, administrative guidelines and best practices.
Each field support specialist covers about 20 counties, Brinson Bell said. They have elections experience and are responsible for providing support to county boards of election.
Noce, who covers 17 western North Carolina counties, said he takes phone calls and emails from county elections officials, visits them for regular check ins to see what they need, and at times, takes over when there is a vacancy.
“In my region, I have a lot of small counties, and so if someone in the office gets sick, it’s typically a two person office, so the whole office gets sick,” he said.
When that happens, or there’s a prolonged vacancy, Noce fills in to “keep the lights on.”
This year, he has three elections directors who will experience their first presidential election in this region: Jackson, Henderson and Swain counties. He said the new directors are “super sharp” and have caught on quickly.
“Of course, being new on a job, everything is an unknown,” he said. “So I had to show them the reporting side of elections, the coding side of elections, getting the equipment set up and ready, basically going through the motions of an election and then loading the results … and then we clear all that out and we’re ready for Election Day and early voting.”
Thankfully, Jackson and Swain are a half hour apart, so Noce can spend a morning at one office and the afternoon at the other. Henderson is about an hour and half away.
Swain County Elections Director Adam Byrnes began in May 2023, and has been through three smaller elections. He arrived at a time of change, with North Carolina’s new voter ID law and broad elections laws Senate Bill 747 and Senate Bill 749.
Noce helped him acclimate, Byrnes said, and he feels like Swain County is in a “good place” right now.
Each election carries unique challenges. In 2020, it was COVID, Noce said. This year, it was the reprinting of absentee ballots after a successful court challenge by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. But somehow, it always seems to work out in the end.
“The people that work in elections are just so adaptable and just roll with the punches, and they do what needs to be done,” Noce said. “It’s so impressive, and I just wish the public knew what they go through to put on an election. I think they’d look a lot kinder on us if they knew the inside details.”
In 2020, North Carolina hired eight field support specialists, responsible for about 12 counties each. But since, the Help America Vote Act funds that supported the roles have decreased, and the North Carolina state legislature has not authorized enough funding to support eight positions, Brinson Bell said.
At one point, the state was down to four field support specialists, but has since found a way to fund six. However, the State Board has been unable to fill the sixth position, which would cover the north east region, including Pasquotank County.
“It’s definitely more challenging with the short staff that we have, but we do the best we can,” Noce said.
Byrnes said that more funding for the State Board would help them get new directors on track, including by hiring more field support specialists.
“The State Board staff has diminished from what it was four years ago,” he said. “They just don’t have the budget they used to have, so it’s a little tougher to lean on the state, but they do still have some really great people there who will be able to help.”
As turnover increases, elections directors get newer
Emma Tate was the 63rd election director to leave in the past five years, Brinson Bell said. It’s one example in an ongoing, national turnover trend in elections directors.
A Carolina Public Press investigation found that turnover was tied to low pay.
Noce said he felt the first shift after the 2016 election, and an even faster “rush of turnover” since 2020.
“I think there’s just been so many changes to election laws, so many procedural changes,” he said. “At some point, it probably gets overwhelming.”
But the new directors are up to the challenge.
Twine said she is excited for her first big election.
“I think that by no means do I feel like I know everything, because I don’t think that if someone’s in the position for 10, 20 years, you’re not going to know everything, because every election is different,” she said. “So, I feel more confident certainly having these first two behind me.”
Back in Pasquotank County, county commissioners agreed to provide an extra $11,000 in local funds to support election efforts. They also approved advancing a planned salary increase for full time elections positions, which applied to new director Hedgepeth.
Columbus County Elections Director Ashley Collins started on Oct. 15, 2022, less than a month before the midterm elections. Her advice to new directors is to remember that everything normally falls into place.
“You just have to stay persistent in making sure that you’re taking care of the simple things or the small tasks to be able to complete or do,” she said. “But nothing that you will do has not been done by somebody else before.”
This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Photo by Element5 Digital: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-dropping-paper-on-box-1550337/
