Pender County
Pender County has five County Commissioners elected for four-year
terms. Although the candidates are attached to specific districts, and
as a result have to meet residency requirements in order to stand, they
are voted for by the county at large. Moreover, the elections are
staggered at two-year intervals, making it harder to offer voters a
broad range of candidates at a given time, or allow them to vote for a
representative legislature. Unsurprisingly given this, although 22.5 %
of the population is African American, all current County Commissioners
are white. The same system is also used to elect the Pender County
Board of Education and all city and town councils. This includes two
towns, Burgaw and St. Helena, which have minority African American
populations sizeable enough have a chance of winning representation
under a full representation system.