Rockingham Plan For Four Early Voting Sites Prevails

The State Board of Elections has added three early-voting sites in Rockingham County after local officials couldn't resolve their disagreements over cost and access.

County Democrats and Republicans went before the state board Sunday, one of 15 counties that couldn't unanimously agree on an early voting plan.

Rockingham previously had four early voting sites. A plan pushed by local Republicans would have dropped that to one location, the Board of Elections office in Wentworth.

The measure backed by Democrats kept the number of sites at four. Hampton Dellinger, an attorney arguing for the Democrats, said that regardless of the intent, the Republican plan in effect was voter-suppression that would keep some people from getting to the polls.

That drew a response from Ken Raymond, a GOP member of the state board from Forsyth County, who called Dellinger's “voter suppression” comment inappropriate.

Rockingham Republicans argued their proposal was the only one that would fit into the roughly $38,000 budget commissioners had set aside for early voting.

The state board supported the Democrats in a party-line vote that also included the state's one unaffiliated board member.

Chairman Andy Penry called the GOP plan "woefully inadequate" before supporting the four-site plan.

The question of Sunday voting was a major concern in other counties.

Several boards were united with the only exception being whether early voting should occur on Sundays. And the nine-member state board was also divided on the issue when it came time to decide.

But unlike the counties, the state did not have to be unanimous in its final decision.

Republican-leaning board members voted against Sunday hours in counties that did not already have them, arguing the decision should be kept at the local level.

But those members who supported them had the majority, which means some counties will now have Sunday voting for the first time.

Another common theme of the meeting: County board members complaining their options on sites and hours were limited by new early voting laws recently passed by the GOP-led General Assembly.

The measures include requiring all sites to be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and prohibiting staggered openings of additional locations.