Ballot printing delayed in some NC counties while elections board considers complaint
A challenge to a candidate’s residency in an Eastern North Carolina state Senate district has caused the printing of ballots to be delayed in several counties.
The coastal Currituck County Board of Elections ruled Tuesday that evidence presented at a hearing challenging the residency of Democratic state Senate candidate Valerie Jordan should move forward to the North Carolina State Board of Elections for a final decision.
A spokesperson for the state board on Tuesday said that the board will have a hearing “as soon as possible” after it gets documents from Currituck County, which could arrive Wednesday.
In the meantime, while the rest of the state’s November ballots have started to be printed, those in the 10 counties of Senate District 3 — Warren, Halifax, Northampton, Martin, Bertie, Hertford, Gates, Tyrrell, Camden and Currituck — are on hold, state board spokesperson Pat Gannon said.
He said the printing of ballots in those counties are being delayed until the protest about Jordan is resolved. If it is not resolved, her name will stay on the ballot.
“Ballots go out to absentee voters beginning Sept. 9 so there is some urgency on the timeline,” Gannon said.
Jordan’s residency challenged
North Carolina election rules require General Assembly candidates to live in their districts for a year before the election.
Jordan grew up in Warrenton, moved to Raleigh decades ago and owns a home in Raleigh. She has been registered to vote at a house in Warrenton since December 2020, not long after her mother died.
Republican campaign staff had photographs and other evidence that Jordan had stayed at least 23 consecutive nights in the house she has owned for more than 20 years in Raleigh.
The Currituck County Board of Elections voted 3-2 that there was substantial evidence of a violation. The elections board in Currituck heard the complaint because that is where Jordan’s Republican opponent, state Rep. Bobby Hanig, filed it last week.
Gannon said the county board must issue a written order with its findings and refer the decision to the State Board of Elections. Then the state board will schedule a meeting to consider the protest.
Republican campaign consultant Nathan Babcock said that the district could be the one that gives Republicans a supermajority. It is one of a few Senate seats in play to determine if the chamber can override a veto from Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper. Republicans are two Senate seats short of a three-fifths supermajority.
“Gov. Cooper gave a quote last week where he said that he didn’t see anything coming of this. To me, that’s jury tampering and putting your thumb on the scale,” Babcock said, adding that it was sending a message out to the Democratic-majority state Board of Elections about how to rule.
Babcock was referring to a tweet from WRAL reporter Travis Fain, and subsequent story by The Daily Advance in Elizabeth City reporting that Cooper predicted “nothing will come of this.”
Jordan said in a statement Tuesday that she is “disappointed that the Currituck Board of Elections did not see Bobby Hanig’s political stunt for what it was.”
“I am a proud resident of Warren County and deeply connected to my community in Warrenton. I plan to appeal this decision to the state Board of Elections and am confident that they will correctly recognize my residency here in Warrenton,” Jordan said. “In the meantime, I will continue to spend my time here in Senate District 3, talking with voters about the issues that matter to them because that’s what the people of eastern North Carolina deserve.”
When Hanig, of Powells Point, filed his complaint, he said voters in Senate District 3 “deserve representation by someone, Republican or Democrat, who lives here and shares their values.”
In a statement, Hanig thanked the Currituck board “for their wisdom and attention to the serious matter of Valerie Jordan not living in Senate District 3. The Board put partisanship aside and did the right thing for the citizens of Senate District 3.”
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This story was originally published August 23, 2022 at 6:51 PM.
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