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Dot Kearns to Board of Elections

Today we're covering Dot Kearns' impending appointment to the Guilford County Board of Elections.

Kearns chose not to run for reelection on the Guilford County school board last year, ending a political career that had her on the Board of Commissioners for two terms and on the school board for four.

Now, she's poised to head back into the game by joining the Board of Elections. She would replace TJ Warren, who is likely to take the seat held by Chairman Jim Turner, who is leaving the board.

Kearns has been pretty big in the Democratic game, once serving on the national platform committee, and then as a delegate in the 1992 and 1996 national conventions.

Despite that, she said that she believes that she could serve by drawing on her nonpartisan experience that being a school board member required.

"Republicans have said that (I) try to (be nonpartisan) in terms of school and education issues," Kearns said. The Board of Elections is not formed to be nonpartisan, however. Two of the three seats on the board are held by Democrats, which is the dominant party in Guilford County.

But back to nonpartisanship, Bill Wright, former nonpartisan mayor of Pleasant Garden and current chairman of the Guilford County GOP, is wary of the term.

"I don’t think that in any of your nonpartisan races, they’re ever completely nonpartisan," he said, "and (candidates have) some basic philosophical view, and whether you have an R or D by your name, you go into whatever position you’re in with some ideology of whether you're conservative or you’re more moderate or liberal."

As for the issues he's had with elections, he said that he was unhappy with the calibration questions with voting machines in Guilford County last year, and the response by the Board of Elections not to recalibrate the machines more often - which, elections director George Gilbert said was time consuming. Also, he added, voters had the option to review their ballot before casting it. Also each time the machines were turned on for the day, they were calibrated.

"I was real disappointed by that decision on the elections board," Wright said, who received complaints that people were hitting the wrong candidate's name when they voted.

Republicans raised the complaint to the Board of Elections at the time.