Leading candidate asks court to reject appeal in Pembroke mayoral dispute

The candidate who secured the most votes in the 2023 Pembroke mayoral race is urging the North Carolina Court of Appeals to reject his opponent’s latest request in an ongoing legal dispute.

Allen Dial filed a court document Thursday asking the Appeals Court to deny Mayor Greg Cummings’ motion for a writ of supersedeas. The writ would block election officials from declaring Dial the winner of the 2023 election.

A three-judge Appeals Court panel issued a temporary stay in the dispute on March 25.

The challenger Dial leads the incumbent Cummings by 19 votes (197 to 178), according to State Board of Elections records of the November 2023 contest. But Cummings has been challenging those results for more than a year.  Cummings has continued to serve as mayor during the legal battle.

Cummings is considered the petitioner at the Appeals Court. Dial is an intervenor in the lawsuit Cummings filed against the state elections board.

“Petitioner has not identified any errors of law” in a March 17 court order affirming the elections board’s ruling against Cummings, Dial’s lawyer wrote in the latest court filing.

The incumbent mayor raised questions about the eligibility of voters who cast ballots in 2023. He challenged enough voters to make a difference in the election’s outcome.

“Notably, Petitioner did not challenge the findings of fact from the Robeson County Board of Elections order in his appeal to the North Carolina Board of Elections or his appeal to the Wake County Superior Court in this matter,” Dial’s court filing continued.

“In those findings of fact, the Robeson County Board of Elections found that there was evidence of only one voter who was ineligible to vote in the Town of Pembroke mayoral election. Intervenor was the witness who testified to that fact during the hearing,” Dial’s lawyer wrote.

“Most importantly, the Robeson County Board of Elections found as facts that Petitioner had no direct knowledge that any of the challenged voters lived outside the Town of Pembroke less than 30 days before the mayoral election, and that Petitioner offered no evidence that any of the challenged voters were in some other way ineligible to vote in the mayoral election,” the court filing added.

“Intervenor was an elected member of Pembroke’s Town Council for 16 years. Intervenor won the November 7, 2023 mayoral election in Pembroke, but because Petitioner (who was the incumbent) obtained a stay of the certification early in the election protest appeal process, Petitioner now has held the office of mayor for almost 17 months without being duly elected by town citizens,” Dial’s lawyer argued.

“Intervenor has been deprived of the opportunity to govern as he was elected to do,” the court filing continued. That included the “mayoral compensation package” estimated at $26,000 a year. “A grant of supersedeas would cause irreparable harm to him.”

“Intervenor asserts that the ‘status quo’ as it relates to this case is that Intervenor was elected appropriately and therefore should have assumed office,” Dial’s lawyer wrote. “Petitioner’s election protest and subsequent appeals prevented that from occurring. A grant of supersedeas would not preserve the status quo but further allow an unelected individual to remain in office.”

“By unanimous vote,” an unnamed three-judge Appeals Court panel issued the order granting Cummings a temporary stay.

“Robeson County has a history of voting irregularities,” Cummings’ lawyers wrote. Dial “was a candidate in 2013 and 2015 elections that were overturned as a result of voter misconduct.”

Cummings has been fighting the election result since filing an official protest 15 days after Election Day. Dial intervened in the court proceedings in May 2024.

The Robeson County election board reviewed the dispute in July 2024. “Testimony was given during the County Board hearing that certain voters in the Mayoral Election listed their residential address as an abandoned lot owned by Intervenor,” Cummings’ lawyers wrote. “Voters associated with Intervenor’s lot all registered to vote on 13 October 2023. Another voter listed her residential address as a restaurant owned by Intervenor. Other voters listed their residential addresses as housing that could not be verified as their residences.”

Dial said he helped people living in a tent community register to vote, according to local media reports about the local elections board hearing.

The Robeson elections board ultimately dismissed Cummings’ appeal on July 15, 2024. The state board followed suit in September 2024.

Cummings argues that a writ of supersedeas is proper because of “extraordinary circumstances” and because “it is in the interests of justice to preserve the status quo, during the pendency of this appeal.”

The court filing accused the county and state elections boards of acting “arbitrarily and capriciously.”

Cummings and Dial have faced each other multiple times in Pembroke mayor’s races. The state ordered a new election after their 2015 contest because of Cummings’ concerns about voting irregularities.

The post Leading candidate asks court to reject appeal in Pembroke mayoral dispute first appeared on Carolina Journal.