he Democrat-run North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) voted Friday to allow hundreds of potentially illegal votes to be counted in multiple elections, claiming that allowing them does not affect election outcomes.
Democrat board members rejected several elections protests, including one from a statewide race for Supreme Court and multiple legislative battles. “I just would see this motion as a sweeping motion that’s an attempt to just dispose of all these protests without giving them the proper factual attention that they deserve,” Republican board member Stacy Eggers IV said of the motion to dismiss all protests, which passed 3-2 along party lines.
While the votes in question in Friday’s hearing might not change election outcomes, they could very well come into play depending on the appeal of last week’s NCSBE decision, when the board threw out more protests from Republican state Supreme Court candidate Judge Jefferson Griffin. Griffin has appealed that decision to the state Supreme Court — the very body whose makeup will be affected by the election.
Friday’s hearing addressed protests to ballots allegedly cast by felons, ballots cast by early voters who then died before Election Day, and ballots from voters not properly registered.
