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New text messages released as part of a demand letter to the North Carolina state auditor’s office show Dallas Woodhouse, the agency’s election liaison who recently resigned, acknowledging that his efforts to cut Sunday voting across the state would face public backlash.
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“We are going to get (expletive) removing Sundays in so many places,” Woodhouse, who previously led the state GOP, wrote in a May 29 text to a Republican member of the Lee County Board of Elections.
In the message, which was released as part of a public records request made by veteran voting rights activist Bob Hall, Woodhouse counsels the board to add an additional Saturday during the early voting period with expanded hours.
“The overall increase in hours makes it easier to sell plus it is better for voters,” he wrote.
Speaking to The News & Observer, Woodhouse said he had no position as to ending or keeping Sunday voting, but acknowledged it has been a contentious issue for years.
“This issue has been a battleground for 18 years,” he said, referring to when early voting first gained popularity in North Carolina. “We heard from our counties very early on, and we saw in the primaries that they had a desire to get rid of Sundays for a lot of reasons.”
Woodhouse noted that the 2026 primary election, the first since election boards flipped to Republican control, featured more total weekend hours than the last comparable election.
“And that will be the case again in the 2026 general election compared to the 2022 general election — that’s a fact,” he said. “There’ll be more voting locations, more voting hours, more voting opportunities, and likely even more weekend voting hours.
“If that’s an effort to suppress votes, we are horrid at it.”
The new messages are shown in screenshots provided by Jay Delancy, a Republican member of the Lee County board, who said that he received the texts after a phone call with Woodhouse.
Speaking to The N&O, Delancy said he asked Woodhouse to send him his suggestions in writing after their call.
“He wasn’t pushy at all,” Delancy said. “He was suggesting an idea, and I asked him to send it to me in writing — and he did — because I thought, ‘That’s a reasonable idea.’”
Tom Duncan, the board’s chair, also responded to Hall’s request with a transcript of nearly identical messages from Woodhouse, though it did not include the line about public backlash to Sunday voting cuts.
At its last meeting, the Lee County Board of Elections split over Sunday voting — meaning their early voting plan will now be decided by the State Board of Elections.
Woodhouse’s texts are referenced in a letter from American Oversight, a left-leaning nonprofit watchdog organization focused on public records, which on Wednesday accused the auditor’s office of failing to comply with its records requests.
The group said that it has filed three public records requests with the auditor’s office related to Woodhouse’s role as elections liaison — a new position created by State Auditor Dave Boliek after state lawmakers gave him control over appointments to election boards.
American Oversight accuses the agency of producing incomplete records, including by omitting text messages Woodhouse sent to county board members, like the one in Lee County. Those texts were never released by the auditor’s office, but rather by the Lee County board itself in response to Hall’s request.
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“We note that many county elections offices — possessing far fewer resources than the OSA — have provided more complete responses to similar public records requests in recent months,” American Oversight’s letter says.
After a series of news stories published about Woodhouse’s texts to election officials, American Oversight asked the auditor’s office why records it turned over didn’t include those texts, the letter says. A representative for the agency then told the group it had “recently became aware of additional records that may be responsive,” the letter says.
The letter goes on to demand that the auditor’s office produce all records responsive to its requests by 5 p.m. on Friday.
“The public has a right to know how decisions affecting access to the ballot are being made,” Chioma Chukwu, executive director of American Oversight, said in a statement. “… When the State Auditor’s office insists responsive records involving Dallas Woodhouse do not exist, then reverses course only after media reports call that assertion into doubt, it raises serious questions about whether government officials are being truthful with the public.”
Randy Brechbiel, a spokesperson for the auditor’s office, said that American Oversight has filed 17 records requests with the agency.
“That’s on top of every other request we receive,” Brechbiel said in a statement to The N&O. “We have fully completed several records requests from a variety of individuals and organizations, including American Oversight, and continue to actively work on all outstanding requests.”
The N&O has also filed two records requests regarding Woodhouse’s role to the state auditor’s office — one of which is nearly 10 months old. Neither has been fulfilled.
In recent months, news stories have proliferated about Woodhouse’s communications with election officials — most of which have resulted from public records requests made directly to county election boards.
Last month, Republican officials in Jackson County said they had been pressured by the GOP and the auditor’s office to reject an early voting site on Western Carolina University’s campus. In texts obtained by NC Local, Woodhouse told the chair “don’t let them have a vote” about the plan.
He told The N&O that this message was intended to encourage the board to wait until it could replace a member who resigned ahead of the vote.
The departing board member, Republican Wes Hanemayer, had written in his resignation letter that his “moral position” had been called into question by unnamed entities outside the board.
And in Pasquotank County, Woodhouse told the board chair to “drop Sunday,” according to a text message obtained by Common Cause NC, a voting rights group. His full message encouraged the county to add more total hours to the early voting plan by adding another Saturday to the schedule.
Woodhouse resigned from the auditor’s office earlier this month, stating that he “knew my time would be short” and that he planned to return to the private sector.
Speaking to CBS 17 last week, Boliek defended Woodhouse.
“Some of the language would not have been my choice. But that being said, there’s nothing nefarious there with any of the communications that have been reported,” he said.
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This story was originally published July 22, 2026 at 1:04 PM.