Friday, American Oversight sent a follow-up letter to the North Carolina Office of the State Auditor (OSA) raising new concerns that the agency’s latest production of records related to the OSA’s communications with county boards of elections and the State Board of Elections remains incomplete, arguing that OSA has yet to account for records involving other OSA officials and staff and appears to have produced screenshots that are cropped in ways that obscure key information.
The letter follows OSA’s August 6 production of roughly 100 pages of records that the agency described as Woodhouse’s text messages responsive to three of our public records requests. But we noted that our requests sought all electronic messages exchanged not only by Woodhouse, but also by State Auditor Dave Boliek, Assistant State Auditor Kelly Mann, and other OSA staff, county election board members and staff, and State Board of Elections members and staff.
Despite OSA’s claim that it has no responsive text messages from Boliek, its August 6 production included messages from other OSA staff referencing communications involving Boliek, raising questions about whether Boliek’s devices were properly searched and all response records produced. Given the deficiencies with the production of Woodhouse-related records, we are now pressing the office to explain what steps were taken to verify that no responsive records actually exist on Boliek’s device.
Our also identifies apparent gaps in OSA’s production when compared with records that county election boards have released directly in response to public records requests. Records missing from OSA’s production include a May 29 text between an unidentified OSA official and Lee County Board of Elections Chair Jay DeLancy, Assistant Auditor Mann’s texts with Sampson County Board of Elections Chair Dwight Williams, and complete text exchanges with Yadkin County Board of Elections Chair Gary Mastin, including messages involving OSA’s Mitchell Whitley.
In addition, we identified 14 pages in OSA’s production where screenshots of text conversations appear to be cropped, cutting off senders, dates, and additional messages. We noted that this cropping appears to be distinct from the redactions referenced in the OSA’s August 6 letter.
“The more we examine the records OSA produced, the more troubling gaps we find,” said Chioma Chukwu, Executive Director of American Oversight. “First it was Woodhouse’s deleted texts. Now it’s cropped screenshots that hide who sent a message and when, and records from other officials and staff that are missing entirely, even though some of them show up in what county election boards turned over. North Carolinians deserve a full and honest accounting of how decisions affecting when, where, and how they can vote early were made. We will not allow OSA to avoid that accountability by producing only the records, or fragments of records, it chooses to disclose.”
We are asking OSA to produce complete, uncropped copies of the affected pages and to provide any applicable privilege log sufficient for a court to evaluate withheld material by Sept. 1, 2026. We are also requesting, by the same date, declarations from Boliek, Mann, and/or any other OSA representative who conducted searches for records responsive to the request, describing those searches and their outcomes.
The letter builds on our ongoing effort to obtain records about the OSA’s communications with county election officials and Republican Party figures regarding early voting plans, Sunday voting hours, and polling locations. We have previously raised concerns about OSA’s failure to preserve and produce responsive records, including OSA’s admission that Woodhouse deleted messages from his phone despite being instructed to preserve them, and have called on the North Carolina State Board of Elections to subpoena Woodhouse for testimony about the deleted records.
