Election issues on county agenda
Published 10:53 am Monday, December 12, 2016
New and returning commissioners will be sworn in at tonight’s meeting, following a delay due to a vote recount.
Re-elected commissioners Gary Brinn, Jerry Langley and Hood Richardson, along with newly elected Commissioner Jerry Evans, will take their oaths of office, as well as elect a chairman and vice-chairman for the new board. Republican candidate Derik Davis asked for a recount after the initial canvass, as less than 1 percent of total votes separated Brinn and Davis, the fourth- and fifth-place vote-getters for four seats on the board. The county Board of Elections was delayed in the recount process while awaiting instructions from the state board. The recount determined Brinn the winner by a margin of 60 votes.
County Attorney David Francisco will submit a budget amendment of $25,000 to the board for professional services in order to address a lawsuit filed against the county. Shortly before the November election, the North Carolina NAACP filed the lawsuit against Beaufort, Cumberland and Moore counties and the state Board of Elections, alleging voter suppression. In the three counties combined, thousands of voters’ registrations were challenged — in Beaufort County, the number was 139, 60 of which were removed from the county’s voter rolls.
U.S. District Judge Loretta Biggs, who presided over a Nov. 4 hearing concerning the lawsuit, wrote in her ruling: “[T]here is little question that the County Boards’ process of allowing third parties to challenge hundreds and, in Cumberland County, thousands of voters within 90 days before the 2016 General Election constitutes the type of ‘systematic’ removal prohibited by the [National Voter Registration Act].” Biggs ordered the boards of elections to take all steps necessary to restore voter registrations purged during the 90 days before Election Day.
Beaufort County’s voter registration challenges, according to Kellie Harris Hopkins, the county’s elections director, stemmed from mailings by Ricky Radcliffe’s campaign for mayor of Belhaven about a year ago. Those mailings were returned to Radcliffe’s campaign because the people mailed the items no longer live at the location where the mailings were addressed to or the mailings were unable to be forwarded, according to Hopkins. Radcliffe, along with Shane Hubers, James Merritt and Allen Rogers, submitted the challenges to the county voter rolls.
State law allows any voter to challenge another voter’s registration. Once a challenge is filed, the local board of elections must conduct a hearing on the challenge, and will take testimony under oath as to evidence a voter should be removed. Under North Carolina law, a returned mailing can be used as prima facie evidence that someone no longer lives at an address, thereby bringing into question county residency.
Francisco will also give an update as to the status of the lawsuit.
Mike Voss contributed to this article.