What I saw inside the Durham County Board of Elections

Since election night 2016, Durham County has been something of a punching bag in Republican circles. That year it was the last North Carolina county to report its returns. When it did report, it put Attorney General Roy Cooper over the top in the governor’s race, defeating incumbent Gov. Pat McCrory. I’ve heard conspiracy theories for nearly a decade now.

I believed then, and still believe now, that what happened that night in Durham County was incompetence — plain and simple — not fraud.

So when I recently had the chance to spend 90 minutes touring the Durham County Board of Elections and sitting down with its staff, I wanted to see for myself whether that old reputation still held up.

It doesn’t. There is no incompetence to be found in this operation today.

I came away thoroughly impressed with Derek Bowens, Durham County’s director of elections. A career election administrator, Bowens is a walking encyclopedia of North Carolina election law. Not only was he diligent, highly professional and able to rattle off statutes at the drop of a hat, but he had endless patience and respect for the barrage of questions he received.

Along with more than a dozen others, I was there in a volunteer capacity with Pillars of the Community, a national group co-chaired by two of the most respected election law attorneys in the country: Republican Ben Ginsberg and Democrat Bob Bauer. I’ve known Ben since 2004, when I had the pleasure of working alongside him while he served as general counsel for President George W. Bush’s reelection campaign. Ben and Bob don’t agree on much politically, but they agree on this: the American Experiment cannot continue if Americans lose confidence in our election systems. I agree. And that’s why I’m involved with Pillars.

The work Pillars is doing is not a partisan project. It’s a survival project. Claims of stolen elections that circulate across the political spectrum are doing real harm to our electorate and to the systems that hold our republic together. Those harms need to be rectified, one county at a time, with facts instead of assumptions.

I want to be careful here about the scope of what I can honestly say. I’m not going to tell you I know the ins and outs of every state’s election administration because I don’t. But I can speak to North Carolina’s, and I can speak to what I saw in Durham that day. I am confident in the security of our elections here. You should feel good about North Carolina having clean elections, free of widespread corruption or any real risk of elections being stolen. I do — not because I was told to, but because I went and saw it up close and personal.

I’ve spent my career in Republican politics. I’m not in the business of giving the people who run our elections a pass. Election integrity is important to me. Still, I am also not going to harp on past grievances or pretend that old problems are still running rampant when they aren’t. What I saw at the Durham County Board of Elections was a far cry from 2016. These days, it is a well-run operation, staffed by people who take their jobs seriously.

Public trust in elections doesn’t rest on any single person’s word, mine included. It’s earned through careful, transparent work as I saw in Durham recently. If you have questions or concerns about North Carolina’s elections, don’t just take my word for it. Visit your county’s board of elections and ask your own questions. I did, and I came away impressed with what I found.

Dan Gurley is a longtime Republican strategist and North Carolina resident. He is participating in Pillars of the Community, an initiative connecting community leaders with election officials to restore trust in the American election system.