Daily Yonder reporters Sarah Melotte and Claire Carlson talk about what’s at stake in rural communities when extremist political movements infiltrate local politics. Melotte and Carlson talk about their own reporting and how they came to the same notion: that when extremist political movements — banning electronic voting systems or defunding libraries for example — enter a rural community, there’s often more at stake in that rural place than there would be in a suburb or a city.
Related links:
Election Deniers Focus Recruitment in Out of the Way Places
Amid Debate, North Carolina County Keeps its Library in Regional System
United Methodist Church Disaffiliation Votes Trouble Rural Pastors
Sarah Melotte: Welcome to Everywhere Radio, a production of the Rural Assembly. Each episode we spotlight the good, scrappy, and joyful ways rural people and their allies are building a more inclusive nation. I’m Sarah Melotte and I’m here with Claire Carlson, and we’re going to talk about what’s at stake in rural communities when extremist political movements infiltrate local politics. Claire and I were kind of having a conversation last week about the way that we independently came to basically the same through line about rural politics. And that through line is that when extremist political movements, things like banning electronic voting systems or defunding libraries, when they enter a rural community, there’s often more at stake in that rural place than there would be maybe in a suburb or a city. And so I guess we can start there, Claire, if you want to tell us about what you discovered when you covered the election denial movement.
Claire Carlson:
I’ve been working pretty much since April, looking at the election denial movement, especially in rural communities. But by the election denial movement, I mean since 2020 there’s been sort of this actually formalized movement of people saying that the 2020 election was a fraud, the election results were not real. And since then, in the midterms in smaller local elections, that movement has still kind of been going. It’s still alive and it’s happening all over, in communities of all sizes. I first wanted to write about this because it was affecting a smaller community, a smaller county in Pennsylvania where actually my whole family is from. That county did a hand count of the 2020 presidential election results in January of 2023 because of a local election denial group who petitioned to have it hand counted. And that petition didn’t require the county to recount the results, but the elections director who I interviewed said, “Okay, we’ll do it. Let’s see what the results are.”
Claire Carlson:
And the difference between the electronically voted ballots and the hand counted ballots were a matter of 10 votes, and that was just because of ovals that were improperly circled, things like that. I don’t think that rural communities are necessarily being targeted exclusively by this movement, but I think there’s the most at risk when election denial happens successfully in those areas. And by successfully, it’s like, they actually do throw out the electronic voting machine and do hand counts, which have been proven to be a lot less effective. But we can get more into that. And Sarah, I mean, you’ve written about that a lot actually, of how rural communities, how the civic and voting infrastructure is generally a lot worse, and voter turnout is usually a lot worse because of it, in rural.
Sarah Melotte:
I don’t want to make it sound like all rural communities are the same in any way because they’re not. There are some rural communities where infrastructure… And when I talk about civic infrastructure, I’m talking about places like the quality and accessibility of libraries and parks and public meeting spaces, schools, things like that. And so there’s some rural communities where they’re doing better in a lot of respects than a lot of urban communities. But just as a generalization, rural communities don’t have as much civic infrastructure as their urban counterparts. The share of the adult population that votes is associated with the accessibility of civic infrastructure. That’s definitely a way that this is related.
Sarah Melotte:
If rural communities are already lacking a lot of the necessary civic infrastructure and then you take away certain things that make it harder to vote, then it might mean that a lot of rural communities have more to lose when things like electronic voting systems are tossed out, or when the option to vote by mail is tossed out, or when it’s harder to do things like register to vote, or when there’s extra hurdles, like you have to have a certain kind of ID or something like that.
Sarah Melotte:
I think rural places are not unique in this respect. They’re just one example. There are lots of other communities that have been historically disinvested, like even highly urban areas that have faced a history of systemic racism and segregation and redlining. They’re going to face a lot of similar challenges that rural places do. And so we’re talking about rural because that’s what we do here, but I just want to highlight that rural places are not the only place where this is happening. And they’re not the only places where this is going to be a challenge.
Claire Carlson:
Yeah, exactly. No, I am so glad you’re emphasizing that because I mean, that was something that I struggled with for a while in really understanding what I was reporting because election denial movement, you’re seeing it all over. You’re seeing it in urban areas, suburban, and rural areas, so trying to understand the real rural focus there was a struggle for a while. And I think similarly, I mean, I really want to talk about your Yancey County Public Library reporting, which is in your local community, and it is just one more example of public libraries facing this pressure that’s really from this outside movement, this outside national movement to ban books. There seems to have been some updates since your first published article on that, but can you give people an idea of what’s going on in North Carolina and what people are having issues with?
Sarah Melotte:
The county neighboring the county that I live in, here in Western North Carolina, we’re a part of a regional library system. It’s Avery County, Mitchell County, and Yancey County libraries are a regional system, and regional libraries get all kinds of funding opportunities and different resources that county-run libraries do not. And so that’s a really important piece here, that the function of the regional library is really important. And so in June, they put up a Pride Month book display, so it’s a table where they put out certain books that might relate to the queer experience and so on. And apparently they’ve been doing that for years and have had a few complaints, but they haven’t had anything hit the fan yet, until June of this year. Someone made a complaint that they thought it was inappropriate and biased to have a book display about Pride Month. And so at the July county commissioner’s meeting, they passed a motion to… The chairman of the board of county commissioners passed a motion to withdraw the library from the regional system.
Sarah Melotte:
And so what that would mean is drastically defunding the library and taking away resources that just would be kind of impossible to keep up the same kind of services that the library provides now. And so it faced a lot of community backlash, especially among the people who were supportive of the queer community and regular library users who were saying, “What are you doing to my public library? I use the services all the time.” People were really worried about what was going to happen. And so they showed up to the county commissioner’s meeting in the courtroom downtown Burnsville, which is the county seat of Yancey, and hundreds of… I don’t know. I’m not a good gauge of counting heads. Don’t quote me on how many people. It was a huge room and it was totally packed, and there was people in the hallways. It was overflowing. And it was overwhelmingly in support of the library and the Pride Month book displays.
Sarah Melotte:
And so they had a public comment period where most people were showing really, really positive support for LGBTQ people in their community and for the library. And the county commissioners eventually said, “You know what?” After talking to Amber Briggs, the regional director, they realized that… After talking to her, she explained to them all of the things that being a part of a regional library does for the community. And they were like, “Yeah, actually we can’t pull out. It’s not going to be feasible.” So it was kind of a win. We were excited that we were going to keep library services, and I was really hopeful. It felt like a rural success story. And then I heard a couple of weeks ago that they just passed, at the last county commissioner’s meeting, a motion to change the bylaws so that there could be no displays that show bias to any ethnic religious group or political group and so on.
Sarah Melotte:
The language was super vague. It’s hard to know if that means, okay, so they’re not going to decorate for Christmas now, or they’re not going to have Black History Month book displays, or is this particularly an LGBTQ thing? We don’t know. But in their attempt to try to, I guess, wrest control of the library, they’re trying to appoint new library board members, which they don’t have the power to do. So there’s all of this. Amber Briggs is trying to cooperate with the county commissioners and talk to them about how they can handle this in a way that doesn’t create fallout. And so I’ve been in touch with her about her commitment to peaceful communication with them and trying to make sure that the rural community, it’s a small town, that it doesn’t just fall apart in conflict, because this is contentious. And so that’s what people are worried about.
Sarah Melotte:
It’s hard because when I was writing the last piece, I think I felt the same way that you did about the election denial story, like, rural places are not the only place that this is happening. And what is it about this that’s particularly rural? Since we’re a rural newspaper, what’s the rural story in this story, other than the fact that it just happened to take place in a rural community? And I think we both independently came to the conclusion that there’s just more at stake when these things happen in rural communities. Usually there’s more at stake when a rural community loses its library. There’s, like I said, less civic infrastructure, less libraries in general to pick from, less funding of the libraries in general. And so they’re doing more with less than maybe their urban counterparts are.
Sarah Melotte:
And the branch manager of the regional library, of the Yancey County Library, excuse me, was saying that they wear so many different hats during the week. They’ll help people apply for jobs or help people apply for disability or SNAP or unemployment, or help people file taxes, or be the place where people who don’t have broadband internet can get things done and check emails. And anyway, it was just an exhaustive list. I can’t even remember all the things that they do, but there would be a lot of people really, really hurt by a change in the library system.
Claire Carlson:
Yeah. Well, I have so many thoughts initially. But what you just mentioned about libraries just wearing so many hats, I mean, once again, we’re talking about parallels here. The county clerks I interviewed all said, “We’re not just running elections or managing voter registration, we’re also filing marriage licenses, accepting passport applications, overseeing motor vehicle registration.” There’s so much that these offices and these libraries are doing that often goes unseen also, that I think it’s just really important to remember that there’s a lot of work that goes into it. And if that was lost, I mean, what happens then? In a larger area, there are probably… If it’s just one library, there’s going to be another library within that city, for example, that can ideally maybe fill some of the gaps. It won’t fill them all. But if it’s the only library, that makes it a lot more challenging.
Claire Carlson:
And this is sort of the question I wanted to ask you, because it sounds like… And similarly with the election denial movement, especially the Lycoming County example I was telling you about, it’s a loud minority in the community, usually, that’s pushing for this stuff. And in Florida, the local school districts are experiencing a lot of complaints filed about books that they feel are inappropriate for children to be exposed to or to be reading. But, I wrote these numbers down so I don’t get them wrong, of the 1,100 complaints in Florida school districts over the past year, 700 came from two school districts. Escambia, apologies if I’m mispronouncing that, and Clay school districts, which I don’t think are particularly rural, but 600 of those complaints came from two people.
Claire Carlson:
So I think that example is a really good one to show that this movement, it is a mile wide, but it’s an inch deep. It seems like there’s really not a huge number of people who are driving this movement, but unfortunately they are still driving it. So I guess that was the most long-winded way of asking you, is that how it feels in Yancey County, that it’s kind of a small group of people? Or what is your sense around what the support is, what the opposition has been?
Sarah Melotte:
It does feel like it’s a small amount of people. Just gauging the amount of support that I saw in the county commissioner’s meeting in July, the packed courtroom during the meeting, and all the people that were supportive, they showed up to be supportive there. And then in the meeting the following day in the library meeting room, which is a board meeting, the town showed up and it was packed in favor of supporting the library. And again, this complaint was made by one person about one display. So I mean, it’s hard to gauge how many people are actually fighting for taking down the library or replacing board members or getting rid of books or anything. I don’t know what the number is, but it feels like it’s probably not that many people.
Claire Carlson:
Part of the election denial reporting I was doing was looking at some of these traveling road shows that the most famous election deniers are doing, where they basically tour the country and talk about election denialism, but it’s often in kind of a roundabout way. They talk about other issues that they’re angry about, and then it spirals, spirals, spirals into election denial. It’s just a few folks, really, but it’s people like Mike Lindell, who is the My Pillow CEO. There’s Seth Keshel, Douglas Frank. There’s one more guy whose name I forget, and I don’t really care to be name-dropping any of these people, but they’re spending all of their time. They’ve made it a full-time job, essentially. So I guess what that is showing is that it doesn’t take many people, it just takes a small number of dedicated people.
Claire Carlson:
But it also makes me wonder what are the ways that… I guess maybe the media fuels some of these movements too, because that’s also what I’ve been wanting to be very careful about is the attention that is brought to these issues, there’s a reason for it. I don’t want to make it seem like it’s a bigger issue than it really is. I think with election denialism, I think it has been important to cover because there is a heightened threat. I mean, that’s been identified by federal offices here that election workers are facing a lot more threats going into 2024. So I think it’s important to talk about that, but talking about it in a way that also doesn’t catastrophize things, I think that’s something that I wonder about a lot, like how do you report fairly on this?
Claire Carlson:
And when I was looking at numbers for my article, the election denial movement, if you look at it in numbers, it’s really hard to quantify exactly how many counties have successfully done something that the election denial movement has pushed for. There’s seven counties that have either decided to not use their electronic voting systems or did a hand count. Doesn’t mean they’re going to do a hand count again, but there’s seven counties that I was able to find across the whole country. There’s a lot more smaller towns that are deciding to do things like that as well. But when you look at it in terms of numbers, the election denial movement has also largely failed, which is just interesting to remember.
Claire Carlson:
So that’s sort of why I don’t want to catastrophize by any means, but also, I think I was saying before, that it is still present. It’s kind of in this plateaued moment right now, especially because usually in August there aren’t elections. There was a special election in Ohio a few weeks ago, but it’s kind of quiet now. But I think it’s really worth paying attention to, especially given next year’s the big one, the big election is coming up, where we’ll see Donald Trump, who is the instigator of the election denial movement, running again. So I think that’s why it’s important to pay attention to, but also important to remember that many, many more counties have not thrown out their voting machines, even from pressure, even with pressure from the election denial movement.
Sarah Melotte:
I think that’s a good way to frame it, is that it’s like, yeah, you can identify that this movement is a threat potentially, and that it’s important to be aware of it, but I don’t think it’s catastrophizing if you’re providing the context that yeah, they’re not succeeding. And majority of people, whether it’s the election denial movement or it’s the libraries, it doesn’t seem like the majority of rural people or Americans in general are really dangerously affirming of these political movements. And then you mentioned also the story that I wrote about the United Methodist Church at the beginning. It’s another example. It’s a similar situation where a lot of United Methodist churches are providing social services for their communities in ways that they wouldn’t maybe otherwise have access to. And so I interviewed several rural pastors who were talking about the fact that they’re there and supportive for their rural community in a way that might be… that those roles might be filled by other organizations in urban or suburban places, but a lot of times, rural churches will step up to fill that role.
Sarah Melotte:
And so the UMC is going through a big debate right now about homosexuality. At the last general conference, which is a meeting that happens every four years… And the general conference is equivalent to the United States Federal Government, so they set doctrine and the theology of the church government and so on. So they voted in 2019 at the last conference that they were going to uphold the traditional plan of marriage. And that means that marriage is between a man and a woman and, this is the language they use, no self-avowed or practicing homosexual can be ordained or may get married in the church. But it won by only a slight majority, like a few percentage points. And so it scared a lot of really conservative congregations because they’re worried about the direction that the church is going.
Sarah Melotte:
And there’s a lot of rural communities or rural congregations that have pulled out of the UMC successfully as a group, and they’ve stayed cohesive, and maybe they’re still providing those social services to their communities in ways they have before when they were affiliated. But a lot of times, these splits, like the church, if they hold a request to disaffiliate, among the church, they’ll split the church in half and it’ll break families up, it’ll break a town up. The debate will really tear up a community, and they might lose these services. They might lose the community cohesion that that congregation brought the community. And so I don’t know if we have data yet on the geography of disaffiliation, like which churches are most likely to disaffiliate. It’s kind of an expensive process. So I feel like that might be a deterrent for a lot of small churches, like small rural churches to disaffiliate. But I feel like it’s happening maybe pretty evenly across geographies. So it’s another example of, it’s not a rural thing, but it’s hurting rural communities more.
Claire Carlson:
Right. And that example in particular seems really challenging because what might cause that rift in the community is moving away from that traditional plan, which some would argue is a good thing. So it sounds like a particularly difficult conversation to have. And I mean, that’s what struck me the most about both of your stories, on UMC disaffiliation and the rural library, is that these spaces are really important gathering places for small communities in particular, and the loss of that is very visceral and very painful. And I think that’s maybe what’s forgotten in some of the reporting or numbers on this is that it feels bad. This stuff is emotionally charged. And I think it’s really important to remember the value of those spaces. Losing places that have a lot of history and just have so much story within them, I think, is a really difficult thing.
Claire Carlson:
And I think it’s part of all of the debates around these issues as well that perhaps goes unsaid, but I think is part of every conversation when you talk about losing resources like this in small communities. So it’s exciting and it’s also often disheartening to look at this stuff and think about it for a long time. But I’m glad both of us are doing it at the Daily Yonder virtual newsroom we have. But yeah. Is there anything else you want to make sure we talk about? We could probably talk for hours, but I know-
Sarah Melotte:
No, we probably could.
Claire Carlson:
We probably shouldn’t. Thanks so much, Sarah. I’ll see you on the next meeting.
Sarah Melotte:
Thank you.