MARSHALL – Residents are voicing concerns after the Madison County Board of Elections voted to scrap two early voting sites beginning with the primary election in March 2026.
The five-member board is composed of three Republicans: Chair Dyatt Smathers, Ray Lewis and Robert Briggs, and two Democrats: Secretary Brian Ball and Debbie Ponder.
The board voted 3-2 in its Oct. 14 meeting to reduce the number of early voting sites from three to one beginning in March.
Smathers, Lewis and Briggs voted to approve the motion to reduce the number of sites, while Ball and Ponder voted against the motion.
According to North Carolina General Statute, each county board of elections must submit a plan to the state board of elections for each election year. Any unanimous plan is approved by the state board. Any contested plan must go before the state board, with the majority plan and minority plans.
The state can then choose to adopt the majority plan or the minority plan, or to adopt its own plan for the county.
In the next step, the majority members and the minority members from the Madison County Board of Elections will need to each submit a plan to the state by Dec. 5, according to Smathers.
He said his main motivation for reducing the number of early voting sites was to cut costs, adding that another aspect of the majority plan was to include additional operating days at the one proposed early voting site, at the Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College’s Madison campus in Marshall.
“If you’ve got three sites, at minimum you have to have five people — a chief judge, two judges, one from each party — and you have to have a minimum of two workers, and we usually have three,” Smathers said. “So you’re talking about six people.”
Dyatt Smathers is the Madison County Board of Elections chair.
Low turnout a factor
Smathers cited lower turnout, particularly at the Hot Springs location in 2022, as another motivating factor, adding that turnout is typically lower during midterm elections as compared to presidential election years.
In the 2022 midterm elections, the county used a Beech Glen site in Mars Hill, A-B Tech’s Madison campus in Marshall and the Hot Springs Community Center as its three early voting sites.
Smathers pointed to having to pay poll workers at these sites to work overtime hours, requiring the county to pay extra.
“The biggest expense to all this, of course, is your labor, with the machines, the ballots, everything that is ancillary to that, including hauling the equipment to the site and bringing the equipment back, paying mileage to the chief judge to bring up the stuff every day,” Smathers said.
Ball said three early voting sites are needed in the county.
“It is a very big county. Certainly, there are a lot of people in Mars Hill and Beech Glen area, as well as Hot Springs with the bridge issues that they have, and delays that they face,” Ball said. “I think it’s a hardship for them to come to one site at A-B Tech.”
Ball said the county board of elections submits budgets to the Madison County Board of Commissioners, which had already approved the board’s budget, including funding for three sites.
“They may feel like they can save money and be able to reduce that for the county, and I understand that, but I’ve got real concerns about just having one site, with that location at A-B Tech. The location is good, but the room is very small. You can ony have so much equipment in that room. You could run into issues with lines.”
Smathers has served on the Madison County Board of Elections since 2011, and Ball since 2018.
Ball said the county has operated three early voting sites for as long as he can remember.
“There are administrative efficiencies with operating one site,” Ball said. “But our obligation is to the voters. And I feel strongly that we should do everything in our power to make it as easy to vote as possible.”
The Madison County Board of Elections office
Further impact on turnout?
Smathers said the state requires only one early voting site for every 30,000 voters.
This requirement was mandated by S.L. 2024-52 and applied only to the November 2024 election in 13 Western North Carolina counties that were severely impacted by Tropical Storm Helene.
Ball and others have raised the issue of the potential for lower voter turnout in 2026 as a consequence of the fewer sites.
But Smathers said that voter suppression was never the intention.
“It has everything to do with serving the public as best we can,” Smathers said.
In the 2022 midterm elections, there were 4,323 Election Day voters; 5,545 early voters; 299 absentee voters; and 48 provisional voters, according to the state board of elections. In the 2022 midterms, there were more than 17,300 registered voters in Madison County.
The Madison County Board of Elections voted 3-2 to approve a plan to reduce the number of early voting sites in the county from three to one beginning in the primary election March 3, 2026.
The Madison County Board of Elections approved a plan to reduce the number of early voting sites from three to one beginning in 2026.
As of Oct. 25, there were 17,400 registered voters in Madison County, according to the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
Ball said he worried that having one early voting site would impact voter turnout.
“To me, convenience matters. Early voting has now become the most popular form of voting, then Election Day voting,” he said.
Smathers said the number of absentee voters continues to rise, and urged voters to consider that method, from “the comfort of their home.”
Smathers said the number of early voting sites for future elections was not set in stone.
“I want to see if this works,” Smathers said. “I want to see if our site is adequate. I want to see what the turnout is, and then we’ll make a decision about November 2026.”
More: Hot Springs candidates speak on Helene recovery, most important issues in public forum
More: Madison County commissioners hear updates on Helene-impacted projects
Johnny Casey is the Madison County communities reporter for The Citizen Times and The News-Record & Sentinel. He can be reached at 828-210-6074 or jcasey@citizentimes.com.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Board of Elections votes to scrap 2 early voting sites starting in ’26
