State Board of Elections dismisses protests along party lines

The State Board of Elections heard a second round of election protests — those originally considered by county boards of elections but referred or appealed to the board for a final decision. 

Republican runner-ups Jefferson Griffin, who ran for North Carolina Supreme Court, and Stacie McGinn, Frank Sossamon and Ashlee Adams, who ran for state legislative seats, filed the protests. 

The protests before the State Board Friday involved factual issues, as opposed to the legal issues considered in their first hearing. They dealt with four categories of challenged ballots:

• those cast by voters who died between the time they voted and Election Day;
• those cast by voters identified as potential active felons;
• those cast by voters whose voter registrations were rejected after failing address verification mailing tests; and
• those cast by absentee voters in Mecklenburg County who were identified as potentially no longer living in the district where they voted. 

Again, the State Board dismissed the protests. First, they ruled along 3-2 party lines that the protesting candidates did not sufficiently notify voters that their vote was being challenged with their postcard mailings. 

Second, they ruled with the same divide that the four protests considered were not “outcome determinative.” In other words, if all the challenged ballots in the protests were removed, the winner of the elections would not have changed. 

The two Republican board members, Stacy “Four” Eggers and Kevin Lewis, argued that even if the protests would not have flipped the race, there was still a taint of corruption over the entire affair.

They were referring partly to county boards of elections in Wake County and other counties that accepted a handful of ballots of deceased voters after their relatives made impassioned pleas during testimony. 

In the Griffin protest hearings, county boards of elections found that 370 challenged voters were eligible, or dismissed protests based on other issues like insufficient voter notification about the protests. Some of those decisions were appealed.

Together, the appeals heard Friday implicated 81 challenged voters. Additionally, county boards had found 68 challenged voters ineligible and 40 whose eligibility is potentially still in question. 

A more technical problem exists for a group of Randolph County ballots.

During Friday’s hearing, issues with a machine recount in Randolph County emerged. State Board General Counsel Paul Cox said a voting tabulator may have malfunctioned, and elections staff may have improperly re-fed ballots into the machine, which could have led to a double count.

The sample hand to eye recount uncovered this discrepancy, but a full hand to eye recount of the entire county has not been conducted. In all, 103 Randolph County absentee ballots are questioned due to this issue. 

All together, 292 ballots are potentially in question. The gap between Griffin and Democrat Allison Riggs is 734 votes. 

While the specific numbers in the Adams, McGinn and Sossamon protest hearing results differed, the bottom line was the same — even if all ballots in question were cast against the protester, and removed from the count, their races would not have flipped. 

Griffin Counsel Jonathan Marx argued that correcting the vote count was important regardless of the overall winner of the race. 

“We would still like to be heard on the merits because the public policy issues presented are significant and we think deserve attention and action by the Board,” he said.

The board declined to do so. 

Lewis also emphasized that the board’s first rulings on three legal protest grounds have been appealed to the North Carolina Supreme Court. In combination with the four protests before the board Friday, they could flip the race in favor of any of the protesters, he said. 

However, even if Griffin prevailed with the courts, it’s not known who those particular voters supported in the Supreme Court contest. Disallowing those ballots could end up with about the same vote margin as at present. While the race could potentially flip to Griffin without those ballots, Riggs’ margin of victory could even increase.

Riggs’ legal team observed that an actual change in the outcome was highly unlikely.

“Let me just start with the bottom line — that there’s no doubt who won the election, that the protests we’re discussing here don’t come anywhere close to changing that result,” Riggs’ counsel Ray Bennett said.

Not all challenged ballots are Riggs votes, he said, describing the situation as “equal opportunity protests.”

Like the State Board decisions made last week, their Friday rulings may also be appealed.

In the Griffin case, the decision may be appealed to the Wake County Superior Court within 10 days of their written decision. In the legislative races, they may be appealed to the appropriate chamber of the General Assembly.

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