Various local election changes were made after the N.C. General Assembly approved House Bill 1035 in late June, changing city elections from odd-numbered years to even-numbered years and requiring special elections when the New Bern Board of Aldermen fails to fill a vacancy.<\/p>\n
House Bill 1035 contains multiple changes to elections in municipalities across North Carolina. The section pertaining to New Bern is Part IV, which details new municipal election and vacancy rules.<\/p>\n
Regular municipal elections in New Bern will now be held at the time of the general election in even-numbered years rather than every four years in odd-numbered years. In addition, the mayor and members of the Board of Aldermen will now be elected on a nonpartisan plurality basis rather than by the nonpartisan election and runoff method.<\/p>\n
Under a plurality system, the candidate or candidates receiving the most votes are declared the winner or winners, even if they do not receive a majority of the vote. Under the runoff method, a candidate must receive a majority of the vote to be elected.<\/p>\n
No municipal elections will be held in 2029. The terms of office for the mayor and six aldermen serving on the law\u2019s effective date whose terms were set to expire in 2029 will be extended by one year. Regular municipal elections in New Bern will resume in 2030.<\/p>\n
Alderman Dana Outlaw, who represents Ward 6 on the board, said the main thing he hopes both changes accomplish is to encourage higher citizen participation in elections, something he said he and other aldermen have studied extensively.<\/p>\n
A 2023 study published by the John F. Kennedy School of Government and data from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Election Lab also found that voter turnout in local elections tends to be higher in even-numbered years when municipal races coincide with presidential, gubernatorial or congressional elections.<\/p>\n
According to a 2025 article by the National Conference of State Legislatures, higher turnout could mean city leaders are elected by a broader portion of the community, and elections could cost less because they share administration costs with statewide and federal contests.<\/p>\n
However, the Associated Press has reported that local issues may receive less attention because they compete with higher-profile state and national campaigns.<\/p>\n
The section of the bill concerning vacancies has also been amended. The remaining members of the Board of Aldermen must appoint a qualified person to fill a vacancy within 90 days of the occurrence of the vacancy to serve the remainder of the unexpired term.<\/p>\n
The Board of Aldermen previously left Sen. Bob Brinson\u2019s Ward 6 seat vacant for more than a year after his appointment to the Senate in 2024. Outlaw was eventually appointed to fill the vacancy on Oct. 14, 2025 after nearly 15 months.<\/p>\n
Now, if the Board of Aldermen fails to appoint a qualified person within 90 days, the Craven County Board of Elections must hold a special election within 180 days of the vacancy to fill the remainder of the unexpired term, which means if the board cannot agree on how to fill a vacant seat, voters, rather than board members, will choose the replacement in a special election.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t particularly want the elimination of runoff, but overall I think it was a good move,\u201d Outlaw said. \u201cWe are all trying to encourage participation in our democracy. We want more people to go out and vote in elections.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Various local election changes were made after the N.C. General Assembly approved House Bill 1035 in late June,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113483,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[10],"tags":[104,305],"class_list":["post-113482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bern","tag-bern","tag-local"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/117069537973761370","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}