CHIEF JUSTICE RECOUNT: Beasley, NC Democratic Party File Petition Alleging Eligible Votes Were NOT Counted, County BOE Confirms They WERE

RALEIGH – When all that separates you from another term as chief justice of the N.C. Supreme Court is a a few hundred votes, it’s understandable that you’d fight for every one of them that could draw you closer.

So, Democrat Chief Justice Cheri Beasley and the N.C. Democratic Party filed petitions in nearly every county across the state alleging that about 2,000 provisional ballots were not counted, when they should have been. The problem is that county Boards of Elections have confirmed many of them were counted. And, as WRAL proclaimed, the flaws were easy to find.

“[…] The 76-page affidavit accompanying the protest listed the ballots in question, but it wasn’t difficult to find problems with it in our look at just a handful of ballots listed in Wake County.

Garner resident Starr Goins was upset to hear that Beasley’s protest said her ballot was rejected. The affidavit stated that her address – a newly built home – wasn’t recognized by the county elections office.

“I did not know that. To find that out was very disheartening and frustrated,” Goins said Wednesday. “I had a conversation with my children, you know, being that I am an African-American woman and how hard we had to fight to vote.”

But Goins’s ballot, and two others WRAL News found listed in the affidavit as rejected were actually counted, according to Wake County elections director Gary Sims.

WRAL News cross-checked the addresses of six other “Wake County” voters listed in the affidavit with county property tax records. All six actually live at addresses outside Wake County, making them ineligible to vote in Wake County. […]”

If WRAL was able to find so many false alarms just in Wake County, how many other false alarms are contained among the roughly 2,000 ballot protests?

To be clear, every legal eligible vote should be counted. The integrity of elections and confidence that your vote is counted is paramount, as we are finding out in races across the country.

However, starting a recount with protests that themselves appear replete with errors is not a good look. The fact that WRAL, which loves to see Democrats win, is calling it out is an indication of how obviously sloppy the scramble is.

Further, this sloppy challenge doesn’t come from some amateur candidate running for Soil and Water Commissioner; it comes from the chief justice of the Supreme Court, the most prominent judicial position in the state, running to retain the seat.

Such obvious sloppiness in these filings is a bit unbecoming of someone that wants to continue as the State’s top jurist.

What’s more, the accusation that votes didn’t count, when they did, doesn’t sit well with those very voters:

“[…] Goins, a registered Democrat, said she didn’t appreciate the false alarm from her own party. She was delighted to hear that the affidavit was wrong and her vote did count, after all.

“I think there needs to be more research, more information looked into, before that information’s given out to someone,” she said. […]”

Exactly.

The recount is supposed to be finished by next Wednesday.