26-05-2025
Former director of the State Board of Elections, Karen Brinson Bell, on her tenure, accomplishments
Karen Brinson Bell joins NC Newsline's Rob Schofield to discuss her six year tenure as director of the NC State Board of Elections. (Photo: Clayton Henkel/NC Newsline)
Over the past six years, few public servants in North Carolina have had a bigger or more positive impact under more difficult circumstances than former State Board of Elections executive director Karen Brinson Bell. Despite woefully inadequate appropriations from the state legislature and relentless attacks from uninformed conspiracy theorists, Brinson Bell persevered, strengthened North Carolina elections and kept them among the nation's most efficient and honestly run.
Unfortunately, those accomplishments were of little interest to the newly installed and hyper-partisan members of the board appointed by Republican state auditor Dave Boliek, who summarily fired Brinson Bell at their first meeting and refused to even allow her to deliver farewell remarks. Happily, Brinson Bell was kind enough join Newsline's Rob Schofield this past week for a special extended conversation and in Part One of our chat, we explored some of the accomplishments from her term in office that she thinks will be the most impactful.
In Part Two, we turned our attention to some of the broader issues and challenges facing American elections – including the increasingly intense partisanship that led North Carolina GOP lawmakers to withhold election funding and, more recently, add seven new political appointees to the agency's staff, and the unfortunate phenomenon of politicians spreading unfounded conspiracy theories and refusing to concede close elections.
Click here to listen to the full interview with Karen Brinson Bell.
Read the prepared remarks of Brinson Bell delivered at the Board of Elections meeting on May 7, 2025.
