Changes to minimum pay, supplemental funding could help NC counties retain elections directors

Twenty-five years ago, North Carolina legislators set minimum pay for county elections directors at $12 an hour.

Fast forward to 2024, and the law remains the same. But high turnover for this key position is plaguing county elections offices.

“We could see collapse, we could see unfilled positions,” said Christopher Cooper , a political science and public affairs professor at Western Carolina University. “It’s not a flashing red light, but it certainly is a yellow light for how we execute democracy in our state.”

During the past five years, more than 43% of the election directors in the state turned over. Meanwhile, in the past year alone, 10 changes to elections directors took place. One vacancy has yet to be filled with another likely to open up in July, according to the N.C. State Board of Elections.

A Carolina Public Press statewide investigation this spring found an indirect but strong correlation between lower pay and high turnover, and higher pay and lower turnover for elections directors in North Carolina counties.

Those who work in election administration say the statute setting the minimum pay level and offering guidance for how county commissioners determine elections director pay needs to be revisited to reflect the current demands of the role and help prevent turnover in the state.

Some say the minimum salary needs to be increased from the $12 an hour in statute, while others said that more centralized control or supplemental funding from the General Assembly could help with pay equity among county elections directors.

“For the vast majority of our state, if not all, $12 an hour is not even a living wage,” said Karen Brinson Bell , the N.C. State Board of Elections’ executive director. “It is an antiquated law that needs to be updated. How that needs to be updated, I’m not sure.”

But CPP has also found that not all counties are able to pay competitive salaries, which must come out of county funds.

These problems aren’t unique to North Carolina and some states are seeing even more severe problems with elections director turnover. But some states are avoiding many of these problems and could point to solutions with potential for North Carolina.

This article is the third in the three-part CPP investigative series Elections Brain Drain . The first article examined the data correlating elections director pay with turnover, and why high turnover poses a serious problem.

The second article examined systemic issues with how elections director pay is set in North Carolina, causing a struggle for some counties to recruit and retrain qualified directors. It also examined increasing pressures elections officials face that may be prompting many to leave their jobs.

This article looks at potential solutions.

Laws can be changed

Sara Lavere , the president of the North Carolina Association of Directors of Elections and elections director in Brunswick County, finds the statute governing pay to be “vague.”

“It should perhaps be revisited, and maybe better clarification about how a salary is determined,” Lavere said.

Several experts and those who work in the elections profession told CPP that the current North Carolina statute needs revision. Some explained ways the state could improve the pay structure to fit the role’s new expectations and prevent or decrease turnover.

The existing law is not written to today’s standard and needs to be updated, said Brinson Bell, but she did not elaborate on how it could be updated.

“It’s always good to have an applicable law on the books,” she said. “But if that’s what’s in the law then there’s always the possibility that it could be misapplied.”

Brinson Bell said all county governments should look at the amount they’re paying their elections directors and staff.

Steven Hines , who has worked in election administration in North Carolina for more than 20 years, said the state would need to step in to revisit the pay structure and set up a tier range and new minimum.

“If you’ve got from 0 to 10,000 registered voters, this is the guaranteed salary and requires those counties to start paying their elections directors that amount,” Hines said. He has served as an elections director in five counties – Pitt, Forsyth, Greene, Carteret counties and most recently, Lenoir County, from which he resigned in August 2023.

Jason Roberts , a professor in the department of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a member of the Orange County Board of Elections, has conducted extensive research on the recruitment and retention of election workers in North Carolina.

Roberts has found that despite high scrutiny, demanding working conditions and challenges in the current political climate, most election workers said they would feel more encouraged to stay in their role with salary increases and better benefits.

More centralized control over pay, more legislative funding and higher minimums for salaries would help alleviate the turnover among elections directors in the state, he said.

“I wouldn’t be opposed to a formula based on how many voters are being served because there are a lot of disparities in how offices are funded,” Roberts said, and “tie it to the job scale in your county.”

While the existing law requires salaries to be on par with comparable counties, Tammy Patrick , the chief executive officer for programs of The Election Center at the National Association of Election Administrators, said compatibility within a county is also important.

Pay should be comparable to other departments within the jurisdiction, she said. Due to the tax base, some counties may not be as well-resourced so assessing pay based on departments within a county could be more realistic.

Roberts also said elections directors pay should be bracketed to other jobs in the county, which it often isn’t. In some counties, election directors are the least paid among department heads.

While this approach could be effective in some counties, it could set the bar too low for smaller and economically challenged counties trying to recruit and retain qualified elections directors. However, this is a question that other states have also been trying to address.

How Florida adjusted elections pay

Since states across the country vary in the structure of their election administrations, offices and pay structure, finding a state-to-state comparison that completely fits can be difficult, according to Mitchell Brown , a political scientist at Auburn University and a founding editor of the Journal of Election Administration Research & Practice.

With that reservation, Brown pointed to Florida as providing an example of achieving pay equity among elections directors in recent years that could offer insights on how to improve pay in North Carolina.

In recent years, Florida made changes to how its elections supervisors — or the state’s version of elections directors — are paid.

Florida, like North Carolina, has a similar issue in that, depending on the size and wealth of the county, the pay is different, Brown said.

“But they recognize that people in the same category of work in the same county were getting different pay so they set the pay to the same minimum level that you see for people in other jobs, like clerk jobs,” she said.

Florida does have some important differences in its system from North Carolina. Florida’s county elections supervisors are elected to four-year terms and considered constitutional officers , similar to other local government offices like clerk of the courts and sheriff.

In North Carolina, county elections directors are hired employees. County elections boards recommend hiring a director, whom the executive director of the state board must approve or reject.

Still, Florida does offer some insights into providing directors with equitable pay to decrease discontentment and turnover, Brown said.

Elections supervisor salaries in Florida are set at the state level, then funded by each county, said Wesley Wilcox , supervisor of elections in Marion County in Ocala, Florida, and chair of the Elections Infrastructure Center for Information Sharing and Analysis Center. He has spent more than 33 years working in elections.

Up until 2017, Wilcox said, elections supervisors were the lowest-paid of Florida’s constitutional officers. Supervisors persuaded the Florida legislature to pass a pay parity bill to make their pay equal to other constitutional officers. While the sheriff is still paid the highest, he said, elections supervisors are paid more and are now on par with others including the clerk of court.

“The pay is still different from county to county and is also based on the actual population, which figures into the calculation,” he said.

For example, Lafayette County, the second-least populated county in Florida, has a population of 8,078 and the supervisor’s salary is $116,772, Cox said, while Miami-Dade County has a population of 2.7 million people and the supervisor there is paid $232,345.

That difference is much less than in North Carolina where Graham County with about 8,000 residents pays its elections director $40,186 annually and Wake County with nearly 1.2 million residents pays its director $197,852.

“We are fortunate (in Florida) with our pay scale and it’s equitable when you think about how this role is running in today’s world,” Wilcox said. “I don’t see how anybody could be a part-time person and do this, especially now with the demands that are required of an election professional.”

Increasing pay actually decreases turnover and has helped raise our professionalism, Wilcox said of the changes to Florida’s pay structure for elections supervisors.

“This job is not what it was 20 or 25 years ago, you know, and I’m not just wearing an election hat for one day,” he said, adding that now election workers have many duties including early voting, vote-by-mail, cybersecurity concerns and physical security concerns among many other responsibilities.

Some NC counties already acting on pay

Some county commissioners and managers recognize the importance of election administration and increasing pay to retain directors. While this is a county-level function in North Carolina, some say guidance from the state and supplemental funds could help with higher pay and retention.

For instance, in Cabarrus County, the election director, Carol Soles , received a $33,550.40 increase, bringing her pay up to $116,584, the highest pay adjustment among the counties that CPP gathered data from for its analysis. Cabarrus, with just over 240,000 residents, is now roughly on par with several similar-sized counties, such as Gaston, Buncombe and Johnston.

However, other counties in that same size range still pay far less, including Onslow paying only $77,374 annually.

“We do periodic pay studies to make sure that we’re current and somewhat in the area with our competitors who are also recruiting good people and we do that for all our department heads,” Cabarrus County Manager Mike Downs said.

If the salaries for department heads, including elections director, are not in the range that they should be based on the pay-study results, then the recommendations are taken up to Cabarrus County commissioners for approval, Downs said.

“The election director has a very important position in the county,” he said. “We’re increasing precincts, the activity at the precincts and the managing of staff, volunteers – it’s the complexity of the position that is equal to, and in some cases is even more difficult than other department heads.”

In McDowell County in Western North Carolina, the commissioners initiated a pay study three years ago to help with retention efforts and it resulted in pay increases for positions countywide, including the elections director, County Manager Ashley Wooten said. The pay study compared their county to other comparable counties in the state.

McDowell County’s election director, Kim Welborn , received the second-highest increase among the counties Carolina Public Press collected data from. Welborn, who has spent nearly three decades in the role, received a $22,650 adjustment, bringing her yearly salary up to $92,742.

Even though McDowell is a smaller county, with about 45,000 residents, Wellborn’s salary is now among the highest in the state.

“It’s not a reward for paying someone more money, but it’s recognizing that if you’re paying someone appropriately for the years of service they have, then the pay is going to be different than someone starting off,” Wooten said.

Even though the county recognized the need to adjust Wellborn’s pay, such decisions don’t come easily for small counties under the current funding model.

The pay adjustments were a “heavy lift” and were implemented over three fiscal years, Wooten said, since the county relies on its own tax base.

“We would gladly take state funding to help supplement that if it was an option,” he said.

Turnover among county election directors and pay equity is an important issue for lawmakers to consider in order to make sure the state continues to have free and open elections, Wooten said.

What’s possible in North Carolina

While states like Florida offer an example for how pay equity for elections directors can be improved without counties having to act individually, it may not be a fully implementable solution in North Carolina.

In North Carolina, the executive director of the state elections board must sign off on hiring and firing decisions for elections directors, Cooper said, but pay decisions come from the counties. So does the funding.

The state does not play a central role in North Carolina, but it can recognize the problem and provide guidance on it to encourage counties to pay more, Cooper said.

Cooper doesn’t favor applying the Florida model for setting pay levels in North Carolina.

“Every county isn’t going to take it and there are budgetary problems, but county commissioners often look to the state for guidance,” Cooper said, suggesting that the state saying elections director pay should be a priority could matter to the counties.

The statute is outdated at this point, but if the state gave new guidance that could encourage counties to pay more, along with state funding to supplement the increases, it could help alleviate the problem, Cooper said.

This funding could be written into the state budget like many other things, such as the about $200,000 for the pickleball diversity program at NC State University in the latest budget, he said.

“It would not be a big lift in the scope of the state budget,” Cooper said.

In recent legislative sessions, more complex tasks were added to the responsibilities of elections directors, Cooper said. That’s not a bad thing, he said, because running free and fair elections is important.

“But you can’t do that without adding additional resources and expect the same result,” he added.

“I think the human power, human resources should be a higher priority and recognized as part of the election infrastructure because it’s not just machines, buildings or reporting systems, it’s human beings doing that work.”

Legislative will to act on pay

CPP reached out to leaders from both major political parties for comment on turnover and pay inequity among county elections directors. None of the Republican leaders who control both chambers of the General Assembly responded. But several Democrats did.

State Rep. Allen Buansi , D-Orange, said legislators could easily provide funding to supplement salaries in counties that can’t provide higher pay for elections directors. Buansi co-sponsored House Bill 293 last year, which included provisions to appropriate funds to support election systems and workers. But it was never heard in the General Assembly, he said.

“This is very much a bipartisan issue,” he said. “The trouble at the General Assembly level is that we know the extent of the problem, but there’s a lack of political will.”

It ultimately, however, comes down to voters who are informed about this issue, according to Buansi.

“We (Democrats) have time and time again proposed bills to appropriate money for election systems, so I will continue to support those efforts,” he said.

Considering that the statute setting pay for elections directors was last changed in 1999, state Sen. Jay Chaudhuri , D-Wake, said the General Assembly should revisit the statute and reexamine minimum pay for election directors as even a canvasser in the current market for either political party earns a $25 to $30 per hour wage.

“We’ve had a real mixed track record in meeting the funding requests from the state board of elections,” he said.

“I can’t commit to anything specific right now,” Chaudhuri said, “but I would like to speak to some of the stakeholders and explore whether raising the minimum pay is a good solution or a partial solution and also look at what other states are doing, including Florida.”

If the minimum pay isn’t increased, the disparity is not addressed and turnover continues, the public will continue to lose confidence in the election system, he said.

“The General Assembly has been pretty divided when it comes to voting rights and approaches in the administration of elections,” he added.

“My hope would be that, at a minimum, when we’re talking about addressing the pay disparity between rural and urban districts, … there isn’t a debate.”

Outside the Legislature, leading political thinkers of different ideologies may have different approaches to the problem of elections director turnover, but they aren’t in total disagreement with one another either.

Andy Jackson , is director of the Civitas Center for Public Integrity at the right-leaning John Locke Foundation. He said the simplest fix from a legislative point of view would be to adjust minimum pay by raising the floor in a way that doesn’t break North Carolina counties’ budgets.

To a question about whether state funding could help alleviate the problem, Jackson said N.C. schools are a model for state funding where the state supplements funds but counties are running the system.

“There may be a place for the state to, if not setting the minimum standards, maybe supplementing, but that’s something I wouldn’t be willing to commit to an idea yet, maybe something worth investigating by the legislature,” Jackson said.

Near parity wouldn’t be realistic, Jackson said, but there may be a reason for the state to look at increasing the $12 minimum, maybe doubling it. In each county, depending on the responsibilities of their elections directors, the required skills can be different, so looking at comparable positions within the county when considering pay is important, he said.

“If there is an excessive amount of turnover that could cause potential problems because you’re losing institutional memory in a lot of these counties, I think lawmakers should at least be aware of this as a potential problem and see if there is a state role,” Jackson said.

“It’s up to the counties to make sure that your election officials are not, for example, being paid significantly less than your parks and recreation.”

Brian Kennedy , a senior policy analyst at left-leaning Democracy NC, has been involved with tracking research as part of the organization’s advocacy efforts in making sure that county board of elections are fully funded.

Democracy NC’s assessment was consistent with CPP’s findings, he said.

“We have a nearly billion-dollar budget surplus and there’s an opportunity here to support our elections,” Kennedy said about the state having the capacity to supplement counties that may not be able to pay their elections directors a competitive or an adequate salary.

The state has a responsibility to make sure that our elections are well-funded, he said.

Increasing the minimum pay for elections directors is “the absolute bare minimum start” and the state should update the statute, Kennedy emphasized. In addition to this, lawmakers will have to seriously consider the personnel it takes to support election administration in counties, he said.

“They’re also going to have to look into passing laws on the state level that are supportive of elections and not making their jobs more difficult,” Kennedy said.

“Part of that probably needs to come in the form of actually listening to what election directors are saying that they need, taking a look at the proposed budgets that they are submitting.”

The collapse of county election boards is very preventable in North Carolina and high turnover  and pay disparity are fixable problems, according to Kennedy.

“We’re coming up on a presidential election, so I think this is very immediate,” he said.