Bladen director says they’ll be ready for muni elections as scheduled this fall

ELIZABETHTOWN — Bladen County is expecting, along with others across the state, to hold its municipal elections as scheduled this fall.

Chris Williams, director of the staff here, updated the county’s appointed board at the regular monthly meeting on Tuesday. It lasted about 15 minutes, and included input from county Commissioner Michael Cogdell to consider redrawing the district lines using census data and taking into account racial diversity.

Williams, in an interview after the meeting, said he participated with other county directors in a Zoom meeting with Karen Brinson Bell, the state Board of Elections director. She’s led the campaign to move all elections for 2021 to 2022, mainly because 62 of the state’s 551 precincts need census data to establish districts.

In her pitch to the legislature earlier this session, she asked for the elections to move to run alongside the mid-term primaries.

“The legislature is not putting anything up to change anything,” Williams said, referring to Bell’s message. “She said there may be lawsuits.”

For he and his staff, Williams reiterated to the board a message in place since Bell’s campaign to change it began.

“We’re going ahead and preparing,” he said. “We’ll have an election unless something changes.”

Municipal elections in Bladen County, population in the mid-30,000s, will affect about 5,000 to 6,000 registered voters. Filing begins here on July 2 at noon and runs through July 16 at noon.

Bell’s plan has sought to move the municipal elections off Nov. 2, and the mid-term primaries off March 8. Both would be on May 3, with any runoffs taking place July 12.

Next year’s mid-terms are the time for a number of county seats to be up for grabs. Also on the line will be all 170 seats in the North Carolina General Assembly, all seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, and about one-third of the U.S. Senate seats.