Just before 3 p.m. on Thursday, October 17—the first day of early voting in North Carolina—the Fuquay-Varina police department received a call reporting harassment at the Hilltop Needmore Town Park early voting site.
The caller, Wayne Paré, said a male “of unknown description” was harassing his wife, Republican state representative Erin Paré, and voters waiting in line. The caller was not on site, according to a police report.
Police interviewed Rep. Paré, who said the man had yelled at her when she accidentally stepped across the no-campaigning line. They also spoke to the man, who said he did not yell but reported Rep. Paré to an election official on site for breaking the rule. Police determined “no crime was committed while on scene or before,” according to the report. The call for service ended without incident.
While the Parés made allegations of harassment in this instance, the INDY spoke to six people and viewed complaints from eight more who described Wayne or Erin Paré harassing or intimidating them or other poll greeters—mostly women—at polling sites in 2020, 2022, and 2024. Rep. Paré declined to comment for this story. Wayne Paré did not respond to an email and phone calls requesting comment.
Andrea Biondi, a long-time volunteer poll greeter for the Democratic Party and the North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE), told the INDY that Wayne Paré repeatedly harassed her during early voting in 2020 and 2022. Biondi recalls that Wayne would stand extremely close to her while she was handing out literature to voters in an attempt to physically intimidate her and make her move.
“His body language was confrontational. He would stand so close to you that you’d want to move, but if you moved then you’d lose your spot on the one section of sidewalk that was open,” Biondi says. “At one point I could actually feel him over my left shoulder, that’s how close he was to me.”
During early voting in 2022, Biondi says Wayne stood behind her and held a clipboard over her head with a sign that read “She just told a lie about my wife. Please ask me for the truth.” The INDY viewed a photograph of Wayne holding the clipboard sign printed with those words. One day at the polls, Paré allegedly held a bell next to Biondi’s ear and rang it every time she tried to speak to a voter.
The same year, Biondi told the INDY, Wayne Paré and Steve Bergstrom, a candidate for Wake school board at the time and former chair of the Wake County GOP, would team up to try to intimidate poll greeters. Bergstrom did not respond to an email and phone calls requesting comment.
“Together, they formed this pair of intimidators,” Biondi says. “And at one point [Wayne] was on one side, Steve was on the other, and Steve was walking up behind both myself and another poller, sniffing us and saying ‘ew.’
Biondi also recalls Wayne asking her outright “Do you feel intimidated now?” and telling her husband, who was there with her, to “control your wife.” Biondi says she remained calm and tried not to engage.
Other poll workers also told the INDY of similar behavior from Wayne Paré. Biondi says women volunteering for the Democrats or the NCAE got the same treatment.
“We called it Wayne-ing,” she says. “Wayne was Wayne-ing at the polls. We would warn each other: Wayne is a bit Wayne-y at the polls, which meant he was kind of manic, and he was really just being aggressive.”
Bambie Lockhart, a public school teacher and seasoned NCAE poll greeter, also experienced aggressive behavior from Wayne Paré at the Hunt Center early voting site in Holly Springs in 2020 and 2022.
“In 2022 … [Wayne] would stand in front of me so that I couldn’t speak to voters, and try to intimidate me by his presence. He would continually ask me what my name was, and try to engage me in repeated conversation,” Lockart says. “When I didn’t respond, he would take pictures of me with his GoPro camera that he would keep on his hip. He also would take out his phone camera and take pictures of me.”
“It took away from my ability to speak to voters,” she says. “I was constantly worried about where Wayne was standing, if Wayne was near me or coming towards me.”
Lockhart decided to contact Rep. Paré about her husband’s behavior. The INDY viewed an email exchange between the two from October 2022, during early voting.
“Your husband attempts to intimidate voters and poll greeters on a daily basis. He uses his phone, his hip camera, his words, his body movements and so much more,” Lockhart wrote.
In her reply, Rep. Paré cc’ed a State Capitol Police officer and accused Lockhart of harassing her and her family.
“Ms. Lockhart’s behavior has been, and continues to be, irrational and inappropriate,” Erin Paré wrote to the officer.
Lockhart says Capitol Police never followed up with her.
Soon after that email exchange, on October 31, 2022, Lockhart was volunteering at the Hunt Center with Biondi, Biondi’s husband, and other Democratic and NCAE poll greeters. Lockhart says Wayne Paré and Steve Bergstrom started harassing them. Wayne had his clipboard and bell. Both men were standing very close to the women volunteers. Feeling uncomfortable, Lockhart decided to call a NCAE lawyer, Verlyn Chesson Porte.
When Porte arrived at the Hunt Center, she says she remembers the scene similarly: the clipboard, the bell, the physical intimidation. Porte reported the behavior to the election official in charge at the site, but he didn’t take any action. Porte told the two men they were preventing Lockhart and the other volunteers from exercising their First Amendment rights, and that she might have to call the police if they continued.
Porte and Lockhart say the Parés and Bergstrom backed off for the remainder of early voting. Porte collected witness statements from Biondi, her husband, and another volunteer who was there that day. The statements that INDY viewed align with Lockhart and Biondi’s stories.
A Democratic poll greeter named Marty Abruscato also had a confrontational run-in with Wayne Paré at the polls in 2022. Abruscato told the INDY that Wayne got very close to him to block him from greeting voters, so Abruscato told him to “get the hell out of my face.” A voter reported the incident to an elections official, who called the police. According to Abruscato, the police left once he explained the situation.
Another Democratic poll greeter, who requested anonymity, told a similar story about both Erin and Wayne being disruptive and aggressive at the polls during early voting. In 2020, she observed Erin Paré standing directly in front of a Democratic Party table to block voters’ views and refusing to move when asked.
“It was like I was back in high school, it was a prom queen election kind of thing,” the volunteer says.
In 2020 and 2022, the volunteer says Wayne Paré often “monopolized the pathway” leading towards the early voting site, blocking poll greeters from opposing groups. She said it got so bad in 2022 that she asked a male volunteer to come stand next to her as a buffer.
“It solved the problem, and I was able to do my job and help the voters,” she said.
A second Democratic poll greeter who also requested anonymity experienced the same pattern of behavior from Wayne Paré.
This greeter told a story about bringing her school-age daughters to the polls in 2022 for a volunteering shift. She watched Wayne Paré step across the buffer line around the voting center—which campaign volunteers are not allowed to cross—and reported him to an election official on site. The official reprimanded Wayne and then returned inside. Once he was gone, Wayne started following the greeter around and photographing her.
“There were times when my girls were next to me, and Wayne would take pictures. I was really unnerved by that,” she says.
Many of the poll greeters the INDY interviewed say they tried to report the Parés’ behavior to the elections official in charge at their polling site, but the officials were busy or unable to do much besides ask the Parés to stop.
According to Wake County Democratic Party chair Kevyn Creech, the party’s voter protection hotline received several reports about the Parés during early voting in 2020 and 2022, including reports of Wayne antagonizing female poll greeters and Rep. Paré calling the police on people who complained about her or her husband. In 2022, Creech says the Wake Democrats began teaching its poll greeters de-escalation methods because these confrontations were becoming so common at the polls.
The INDY viewed six complaints Creech received about Erin or Wayne Paré during early voting in 2020, 2022, and 2024.
In the most recent complaint, a poll greeter at the Hilltop Needmore site complained to Creech that the Parés were there, crossing the buffer line and following Democratic greeters around. Wayne was apparently wearing a body camera. The INDY viewed the emailed complaint which had identifying information redacted.
“New poll greeters at Hilltop need to know Wayne and Erin’s tactics,” the greeter wrote. “She holds court there.”
Chloe Courtney Bohl is a corps member for Report for America. Reach her at [email protected].
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