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Lawsuit challenges changes to Watauga local elections

A voting precinct on the campus of Appalacian State University
Paul Garber
/
WFDD File
An early voting precinct at the student union on the campus of Appalachian State University.

Voting rights activists in Watauga County have filed a lawsuit over changes to local elections that the legislature imposed ahead of the 2024 election.

GOP lawmakers approved a measure that changed the way voters chose the members of the board of commissioners and the board of education.

Some commissioners weren’t pleased, and in response, they put a measure on the ballot that included a mixture of district and at-large seats.

Voters overwhelmingly approved that referendum. But the legislature passed another bill keeping the measure from taking effect until 2034.

That’s one of the things that plaintiffs, including the Watauga Voting Rights Task Force and Common Cause, are suing over.

Another plaintiff is Ray Russell. He’s a former state representative and county commissioner. He says it’s unfair that a referendum that got such strong voter support is being delayed.

“Seventy-one percent of the people in Watauga County voted for something," he says. "And the legislature is denying the right for that to go into effect.”

The defendants are predominantly Watuaga government officials involved in local elections.

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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