Commissioner’s proposal to cut Bladen County board seats draws warnings from voting-rights groups

A proposal to shrink the Bladen County Board of Commissioners from nine members to five drew immediate public pushback June 1, with voting-rights lawyers and civil-rights leaders saying the timing raised concerns about equity and representation.

The board heard a passionate on-the-record defense from a commissioner who said he originally proposed the change to reduce costs and workloads, and that he would volunteer to give up his seat if the change required four members to 'go home.' “If all this requires is four of us volunteering to go home, I want you to listen … I said I’ll be the first volunteer and I’ll go home,” the commissioner told the meeting.

Why it matters: Several speakers said a structural change could reduce geographic and minority representation across Bladen County, a geographically large jurisdiction where residents said some pockets already feel underrepresented. The May 18 proposal prompted hundreds of emails and a strong public turnout for the meeting’s public-comment period.

Hillary Klene, senior counsel for voting rights at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, told the board the timing of the May 18 proposal was “very concerning” and said it “really did look like some members of the board perhaps wanted to weaponize the recent Supreme Court decision in Louisiana to hurt the voters in this county and specifically to hurt its Black and African-American voters.” Deborah Maxwell, identified as president of the North Carolina NAACP, told commissioners the organization will monitor any move that looks like voter suppression and said, “We will come wherever we hear the hint of possible voter suppression in these days and in these times.”

Board response and context: The commissioner who raised the idea said the suggestion was driven by an attempt to shave roughly $75,000 from the county’s annual costs for four seats, and repeatedly emphasized that any change would have to be legal and ultimately decided by voters. He said he did not intend to silence or harm any constituency and asked the public to “calm down” after the email firestorm that followed public discussion.

Several residents and former local officials urged the board to consider Bladen County’s large geography and pockets of limited services before altering representative structures. A former town council member said reducing seats could leave some communities without meaningful representation.

What’s next: No formal vote to change the board structure was recorded at the June 1 meeting. Commissioners discussed the proposal in the matters-of-interest portion of the meeting and responded to public comment; a number of speakers asked the board to pause and study the issue further. Any formal change to the board’s composition would require legal review and, under the county’s description at the meeting, a public vote.

The board did not adopt an ordinance or take a final action on the proposal at this meeting; supporters and opponents said they will continue to monitor the county’s process.