Durham elections board open to hear vote miscount evidence

In an interview with Policy Watch’s Chris Fitzsimon, Bitzer pointed to a series of Democratic wins in the state – most prominently Attorney General Roy Cooper, who finished election night about 5,000 votes ahead of Gov.

But as The Washington Post’s Amber Phillips reported last week, Republicans were not conceding the race.

Rowerdink, who attended the meeting Friday morning but did not speak, said later when reached by telephone that he was contacted by an attorney for McCrory’s campaign about filing the complaint, since the complainant must be a voter in the county.

While a formal complaint was filed by the victor of that local supervisor race, the McCrory campaign alleges some evidence suggests a group associated with the state Democratic Party may have paid people to cast votes for a write-in Democrat in that race and every other Democrat on the ballot, including Cooper.

The State Bureau of Investigation is investigating whether crimes were committed in the mishandling of more than 1,000 provisional ballots in March.

Counties had until Friday to certify their results, but that may be delayed. At no point did Dowless suggest that Monroe, the PAC, or anyone else had been trying to help Cooper, but McCrory’s campaign quickly seized on the complaint.

Stark said he’s not clear whether he’ll seek court orders to inspect the vote data or what other evidence he might present Friday. State elections officials on Friday were still checking each provisional vote cast to determine its eligibility.

Today HRC and Equality NC blasted Pat McCrory for refusing to admit defeat despite vote tallies showing that Roy Cooper has increased his winning margin to more than 8,000 votes.

“He stared down the giant of the National Basketball Association and stood strong against government discrimination of private entities and for the principles of protecting privacy and safety in government buildings”, Perkins said about McCrory. There’s people who have double-voted. Pat McCrory by less than 5,000 votes, or 0.11 percent, but the numbers shift as each county decides on challenges.

But Democrats have found refuge in two issues created by Republicans.

All of the state’s county elections boards are controlled by Republicans. Bladen County, an area of roughly 30,000 people near North Carolina’s southern state boundary according to the 2010 United States Census, has been subject to claims of fraud.

The Republican Governor has filed challenges in fifty counties, alleging that convicted felons and even dead people voted.

A Cooper victory would be the only governorship addition for Democrats.

McCrory campaign spokesman Ricky Diaz countered that Cooper’s side is making “presumptuous statements” at a time when counties have postponed their final tabulations.

Using history as an indicator, this means McCrory could have a tough time making up the difference of a few thousand votes. That bar gets even higher for McCrory since provisionals are disproportionately cast by minorities, who tend to vote Democratic.

Democrat Josh Stein also beat out Republican Buck Newton for Attorney General. Cooper refused to defend the bill in court. “But if the Atkinson precedent is followed, the legislature may have the final say”. “We don’t presume they have done this”. The Democratic-led Legislature chose Democrat June Atkinson the following August. Cooper leads McCrory in the intensely-contested race and with nearly 5 million ballots casted.

“I think it’s a Hail Mary”.