Dave Boliek: North Carolina State Auditor

Dave Boliek is the only State Auditor in the country with authority over his state’s elections, the result of a power grab by election-denying Republicans. Boliek has proven to be just the man the conspiracy theorists wanted for the job: he has used it to flip every election board in the state, appointed a party operative as liaison to those boards, and met privately for hours with activists who tried to overturn elections, telling them to keep it from the press.

Worst moments:

• Took office amid a “partisan power grab” that stripped election authority from a Democratic Governor.
• Met with a prominent election denial and voter intimidation group and was reportedly “super enthusiastic” about their ideas, but asked them to keep the meeting from the public.
• Flipped the State Board of Elections and all 100 county-level elections boards to Republican majorities, then appointed a liaison to the board who worked with the GOP appointees to skew voting plans in Republicans’ favor.

History of election denial

Boliek entered politics with his 2024 campaign for State Auditor, a race in which he said he was “only in politics for” Donald Trump. Despite the State Auditor not having authority over elections, Boliek curried favor on the MAGA right by adopting election denial rhetoric, complaining about differences in election administration between urban and rural counties and pledging to house an “Office of Election Integrity” within the State Auditor’s Office.

When Boliek took office, the North Carolina GOP took advantage of the election of a statewide official who had appealed to election deniers. Republicans in the state legislature stripped the authority to appoint local and statewide election officials from the Secretary of State and gave the authority to the State Auditor, making North Carolina the only state to give their auditor election-related authority.

Prominent North Carolina election denier Jim Womack, the president of a Cleta Mitchell-aligned voter intimidation group, welcomed the granting of election authority to Boliek, saying he expected him to be “dandy.” Womack’s group, who by Womack’s own account challenge voters on the basis of Hispanic-sounding last names, got just what they wanted in August 2026, when Boliek held a multi-hour meeting with a group of election deniers to discuss their ideas for “securing” the 2026 midterm elections. Boliek reportedly attempted to keep participants from discussing the meeting with the media, but one prominent election conspiracist who attended described Boliek as “super enthusiastic” about their ideas.

Influence over election administration

In December 2024, after North Carolina Democrats retained the governorship, the Republican legislature passed Senate Bill 382, stripping the appointment of the State Board of Elections and the chair of every county board of elections from the Governor and giving those powers to the State Auditor. North Carolina is now the only state that puts election oversight in the auditor's office, and North Carolina Democrats have called the move what it is: “a partisan power grab.”

Boliek has used his newly-granted election power to pursue the goals of the election denial movement. Boliek appointed a Republican majority to the State Board of Elections, whose first act was to replace the agency’s Executive Director with a party operative. All 100 county boards flipped to Republican majorities under chairs Boliek picked.

More disturbingly, the State Auditor’s Office under Boliek has aligned itself directly with the Republican majorities he chose. Boliek appointed Dallas Woodhouse, former executive director of the state Republican Party, as his liaison to the state and county boards, writing that Woodhouse would be his “eyes and ears on the ground.” Hundreds of pages of records obtained by American Oversight and reported by NC Newsline show Woodhouse urging counties to drop Sunday early voting hours, coaching county chairs on bargaining tactics to force unanimous approval of plans Democrats opposed, and telling county chairs “what Republicans on the state Board of Elections would or wouldn’t approve and what the state Republican Party wanted.” His texts with officials in counties including Columbus and Anson reportedly framed decisions about what polling places to open around what “GOP voters need.” Woodhouse had done a version of this before: a decade earlier, as state GOP director, he sent county Republican board members a memo telling them to limit early voting hours and keep sites closed on Sundays.