# Sam Hayes **Sam Hayes** has been executive director of the **[[North Carolina State Board of Elections]]** since May 2025, which makes him the chief election administrator of a presidential and Senate battleground. He is the product of the clearest partisan capture of a state election agency in the post-2020 period. The GOP legislature, over Gov. Roy Cooper's veto, moved the power to appoint the State Board from the governor to the newly Republican state auditor. The new Republican majority then replaced career director [[Karen Brinson Bell]] with Hayes, previously general counsel to the Republican House Speaker. ## The record - **Registration Repair.** Launched July 17, 2025, after the disputed 2024 state Supreme Court race exposed registrations missing a driver's-license or Social Security number. It targeted about **82,000 voters**, and by May 2026 about 37% had been "repaired." The board says no one was removed through it. It was written into a **Sept. 9, 2025** settlement with the Justice Department in *United States v. North Carolina State Board of Elections*. - **SAVE screening.** In April 2026 North Carolina ran **7.4 million voter records** through DHS's expanded SAVE citizenship-verification system. The July 17 results flagged **1,599 potential non-citizens** among 7.8 million registrants and about 34,000 to 35,000 deceased registrants. Hayes: "one ineligible registrant is still one too many." He promised research and due process before any removal. - **The Supreme Court ruling.** On **Sept. 25, 2026** the U.S. Supreme Court stayed an injunction and let DHS keep operating the expanded SAVE system. Justices Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson dissented. Hayes welcomed it, and said no voter would be removed automatically. The federal 90-day quiet period before an election limits systematic removals before November. - **Sunday early voting.** On Aug. 20–21, 2026, the board's Republicans voted 3–2 to approve county early-voting plans that dropped Sunday hours in ten more counties, bringing the total to 23 without Sunday voting. Former state GOP executive director Dallas Woodhouse, hired by the auditor, had encouraged county chairs to drop them. Critics included Black clergy. The Rev. Floyd Wicker said it "appears that some people on our state Board of Elections are trying to make it more difficult for people in my community to vote." - **Ready to Register.** On July 1, 2026, his office warned voters that a bulk-mailing registration operation aimed at conservative voters was sending error-filled forms. That is a Republican-installed administrator rebuking a right-leaning operation. See [[Ready to Register]]. ## How to read him Hayes's public voice is procedural: modernization (a new SEIMS vendor in February 2026), due process, "no automatic removals." The structural facts point the other way. He was installed by a partisan appointment change, and his tenure has concentrated on citizenship screening and on narrowing Sunday voting, the day of the Black churches' "souls to the polls" drives. The two are compatible. The midterm test is whether the list-maintenance work stays inside the due-process lines he has drawn in public. ## See Also - [[North Carolina State Board of Elections]] · [[Karen Brinson Bell]] · [[Elaine Marshall]] - [[Ready to Register]] · [[SAVE Act]] · [[National Voter Registration Act]] - [[Battleground Election Officials Hub]] · [[State Election Administration Tree]] · [[Election Certification]]