“I’ve never seen in all the years I’ve been doing this ... so much incivility, rudeness – I just can’t put a name on it,” board Chairwoman Carol Anderson said. “It’s risen from unpleasant to we just can’t have it.”

The board invited candidates and political operatives to meet after two incidents at early-voting sites when police were called to remove campaign workers whose behavior disrupted the voting process.

Poll officials have had to deal with a number of other incidents, and complaints have flowed into the elections office, Anderson said.

“We’ve had a huge number,” Anderson said. “Voters complaining they’re feeling harassed, intimidated, overwhelmed. They feel like their rights are being abridged. ... This can be unsettling at the least and frightening at the most.”

County commissioner candidates Omar Beasley, Brenda Howerton, Wendy Jacobs and Ellen Reckhow came to the meeting, along with Jacobs’ campaign manager, Jackie Brown; Democratic Party Chairwoman Tracey Burns-Vann and Republican Party Chairman Ted Hicks; representatives from the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People and the Durham People’s Alliance PACs and several individuals.

Out of line

During the 44-minute session, several of them said they had not been aware of the incidents and asked that the board forward any further complaints to candidates and political groups whose workers get out of line. Several also raised specific questions about rules, such as those involving drive-up voting and retrieving campaign literature discarded inside polling places.

There was also discussion of banning disruptive campaigners from any voting sites, but board member Bill Brian, an attorney, said that would be impractical since such “prior restraint” would require court orders and judicial proceedings. Still, anyone interfering with poll operations may be ejected on the spot.

“We have a statutory obligation to maintain order at the polls and ... we’re going to have to take action,” Brian said. “To start removing people – we’d rather not get to that point if we can avoid it.”

Brian said the Board of Elections has received formal complaints of campaigners giving out inaccurate information and campaign material distributed without the required attribution, “just a wide variety of different types of complaints.

“Complaints that people are thrusting things in people’s faces, they’re yelling at people ... these encounters between campaign workers.”

Durham is not unique. According to the state Board of Elections, “aggressive electioneering” has been going on statewide, with campaigners accosting voters despite no-campaigning zones around voting places and using “profanity and aggressive language” with each other.

A Tuesday memo from the state office reminded county boards of their obligation to “keep open and unobstructed” the polling and registration sites. “Aggressive and unlawful electioneering shall not be tolerated,” the memo said.

“At the risk of sounding maudlin, we’re all neighbors in Durham, we’re going to have to work together on the day after Election Day, and that’s the bottom line," said Anderson.

“Behave like an adult,” said Brian.