Duplin County Board of Elections welcomes new director 5 months before presidential election

WARSAW — The Duplin County Board of Elections recently welcomed its new director, Carrie Sullivan, who took over the role left by former director Jasmine Gadsden. Sullivan was sworn in on June 6.

While Sullivan is new to the role, she is not new to the Board of Elections or the electoral process.  The Wallace resident started her journey with the Duplin County Board of Elections in 2020 working her way up to deputy director. She was named interim director in April when Gadsden announced her resignation to pursue other interests.

“I came into the position of deputy director about two and a half years ago and then, after Jasmine left, I stepped into this role,” Sullivan said. 

When asked how she felt about stepping into the director role only five months away from the presidential election, Sullivan said she felt confident about it.

“I worked in a precinct on election day for the last presidential. So, I have been out there and experienced that portion of it,” Sullivan said. “There are a few other duties that were not part of my wheelhouse before I had this position. But being that I have worked in the elections now for a couple of years, I feel confident.”

“I have a great relationship with all our precinct officials because I was the one that was over all the training, the correspondence with them. … I am confident that we are going to get through it, nervous just because it is a big presidential election to really have my name on for the first time.” 

Sullivan shared that they are seeing an abundance of voter registrations. 

“There are a lot of people out doing registration drives, so we are seeing an influx of them,” Sullivan told Duplin Journal, adding that the state is also seeing a huge amount to the point that they are sorting them every day.

She also shared that they are having a lot of correspondence with voters, answering questions. 

“We are in a very big presidential year, so we all remember how the last one went — there was a lot of confusion. What we want to do is make sure that we don’t allow that confusion in Duplin County. We want to make sure that we are open and available for them.”

There are many processes that go on behind the scenes as officials prepare for election day. Among them is ensuring that anytime new streets are added in the county, that they are entered into the system so those voters are placed in the correct precinct so when the ballots are made, each one is assigned to the correct voter.

Another important weekly process is list maintenance, for which they monitor new felonies and deaths.

“We remove the felons off the list. If there are any deaths, we have to process that and remove them off just so that we are making sure that we have the most active registration so that there is nothing that anybody can worry about. Nobody can vote on anything that is not their own,” she said, adding that it used to be a monthly task, but the state requires it now to be done weekly so everything is maintained and up to date. 

Another task they are focusing on is getting precinct officials ready. Sullivan shared that they have a strong group of people that have been coming back year after year to work at the precincts.

“It is a big year for them too. They only see us once a year,” said Sullivan. “Our big thing right now is working through our training process and identifying anything we may have missed last time so that we can adjust it this time and make sure that we are really hitting on the things that they need to know so that they can get through it and have a successful day.” 

Among the training precinct officials receive to get ready for election day, are things like understanding what types of IDs can be accepted and how to deal with certain eventualities, like an expired ID. 

“So even if you just forgot to renew it this year, you can still go to the voting polls and use that as identification because all we are looking at is to make sure that the person you say you are matches the face we’re looking at,” said Sullivan. “So that is really important for them to know. But also, if something is wrong with your ID, we are not going to turn you away at the polls.” 

She explained that people could still vote on a provisional ballot and either bring their ID later or fill out an ID exception form at the polls and still be able to vote. College students can use their James Sprunt Community College ID. 

“So, our whole thing is to make sure that everybody knows if you go, you’re going to get the opportunity to vote.” 

Visit the state website at ncsbe.gov for more information about the Nov. 5 presidential election.