The Cumberland County Board of Elections will not release final results of the Nov. 5 election until Monday — an unexpected delay caused by the discovery of over 100 invalid ballots at Friday’s canvass that need to be manually subtracted from the vote counts over the weekend.
Across the state on Friday, elections officials participate in the county canvass, a formal process where county Boards of Election finalize the unofficial election results reported on election night. The process involves sorting through provisional ballots, such as those submitted by voters with faulty registrations or who could not present photo IDs when voting in person. The canvass occurs 10 days after the election, but counties can delay the certification process if they are unable to count all the votes in time.
The county’s elections staff will be working over the weekend to update ballot counts following Friday’s canvass, according to Board of Elections Director Angie Amaro. Finalizing the results has been delayed due to 121 ballots that require further verification. Of these, 117 were cast by early voters who registered on the same day, but whose addresses could not be confirmed. This issue arises from a recent law change requiring these voters to provide legal documentation of their name and address to complete their registration, Amaro said.
“The law has changed for same-day registration,” Amaro said. “Once they do a same-day registration, they have to provide a legal document with their name and address. Then we send them a voter card. And if that voter card comes back as undeliverable, we scan it into the system, we contact them by phone and send them a letter letting them know they need to bring us additional documentation. And if they fail to do so, then their ballot is retracted.”
Vote tallies are likely to fluctuate throughout the weekend, as there are 725 provisional ballots that were approved by the county Board of Elections during the canvassing process, which staff said they will upload before Monday. The Board of Elections also invalidated 23 provisional ballots at Friday’s canvass that elections staff is in the process of subtracting from the vote count.
The further delay comes after the county also experienced long waits in releasing unofficial election results on Election Day, when most of the vote totals were not posted until 1 a.m. The delay stemmed from a new state law that prevents counties from counting early voting totals until the polls close on Election Day, and from an unusually large soldier turnout at certain precincts this year, elections officials previously told CityView.
“This has been a hard-fought canvass,” the board’s Chairperson Irene Grimes said at Friday’s meeting.
Challenges resolved
At Friday’s canvass, the Board of Elections considered 23 provisional ballots that fell into four categories: deceased voters, voters who voted twice, voters with a felony conviction and voters who were not citizens. Cumberland County Board of Elections members diligently parsed through each of these ballots on Friday.
Eight voters in the county had died before Election Day but after casting their ballots, so the board discounted their votes, as per state statute.
In addition, there were five voters who cast ballots twice. Of those five voters: two people were found to have voted both on Election Day and during absentee voting, one person voted curbside twice and another voted twice during the early voting period. The fifth person voted with a provisional ballot on Election Day, but election officials discovered someone cast a ballot for the voter during the early voting period. In that case, Board of Elections members suggested the “impersonator” was likely able to vote because the poll worker determined their photo ID was accurate.
“So whoever was checking IDs for this impersonator felt that the image they were looking at matched … the person standing in front of them,” board member Linda Devore said.
The board counted the actual voter’s provisional ballot and discarded the one cast by the impersonator.
In those five cases of duplicate ballots, the board determined which ballot would be counted, and also forwarded the cases to the state board of elections for investigation. In North Carolina, it is against the law to vote twice in an election. If a voter has already voted once, and insists on voting again, they are allowed to cast a provisional ballot that will be assessed after Election Day to determine if it should be counted.
Nine voters who are convicted felons voted, despite not completing parole, and their ballots were removed by the board on Friday as well. There was also one voter who voted early but later self-reported to be a permanent resident, not a U.S. citizen, so his ballot was discounted.
Final results and recounts
In the close county commissioners race, fourth-place contender Peter Pappas, who was at the canvass, told CityView he still planned to request a recount as soon as results were certified. Pappas narrowly lost to Henry Tyson. As of Friday at 6 p.m., Tyson had 37,890 votes (16.47%) and Pappas had 37,713 votes (16.39%), according to unofficial State Board of Elections results. Tyson received the third-most votes in the county commissioners race, in which the top three vote-getters are elected.
The Board of Elections will reconvene at 4 p.m. Monday to complete the canvassing process, after which the final results will be certified.
Contact Evey Weisblat at eweisblat@cityviewnc.com or 216-527-3608. This story was made possible by donations from readers like you to CityView News Fund, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization committed to an informed democracy in Fayetteville and Cumberland County.
