For twenty years, Gary Bartlett served as executive director of the North Carolina board of elections under three Democratic governors, and during that time he oversaw massive reforms in the state’s voting laws. The procedures introduced included a state-wide voter registration system and the implementation of absentee and out-of-precinct voting.
Bartlett took a personal interest in these programs because of his fundamental belief that every eligible citizen should exercise their right to vote. His work helped boost North Carolina’s voter turnout from 43rd in the country in the 1996 Presidential election all the way to 11th in 2012.
House Bill 589 was passed in 2013 – almost immediately after Bartlett left his position – under a Republican-controlled state legislature and new Republican Governor Pat McCrory. This legislation curtailed many of the reforms Bartlett had pioneered and disenfranchised many voters either who did not have proper identification or did not have the proper means to cast their ballots.
In the three years since Bartlett left the elections board he has since been mostly removed from politics (aside from an affidavit he contributed to the Justice Department lawsuit against H.B. 589). He now works as an independent consultant based out of Goldsboro, N.C.
We – Duke University seniors Kate Pantano and David Rieder – visited with Bartlett in Raleigh on April 6 to discuss his work from his time on the elections board and why he made particular decisions in that position. Bartlett also shared his thoughts on how the voting process has changed in the three years since he left.
On this site you can find quotes from our interview with Bartlett with explanations of the key issues covered. There is also a timeline of key events for voting rights in North Carolina over the past 25 years, as well as a biography of Bartlett and the video of our interview with Bartlett along with the attached transcript.
