NC woman running for judge in Democratic primary won’t be party nominee, even if she wins
The N.C. Board of Elections said Wednesday that an Orange County candidate will not become the Democratic nominee in November if she wins the party’s local primary race for judge.
The state board has told attorney Erika Bales about its decision, according to an email response from board spokesman Patrick Gannon.
Bales, who is registered as an unaffiliated voter in Orange County, improperly filed as a Democrat in December for the District Court 15B judge’s seat.
“Ms. Bales certified on her notice of candidacy that she was a Democrat when she filed to run for judge, and the state and county boards of elections mistakenly certified her as a Democratic candidate,” Gannon said. “We have advised her that she may petition as an unaffiliated candidate, because elections officials should not have certified her candidacy.”
The mistake was discovered too late to remove Bales’ name from the Democratic primary ballot.
This is the first year that North Carolina’s judicial candidates have had to run partisan campaigns. Candidates had to update their voter registration, if necessary, at least 90 days before the primary to be on the Democratic or Republican ballot.
The other option for an unaffiliated candidate is to run as unaffiliated in the November general election.
Bales is running against Noah Oswald, Hathaway Pendergrass and Lamar Proctor to replace retiring District Court Judge Jay Bryan in District 15B.
Bales, a local attorney, admits she made a mistake in writing “Democratic” on the filing form where it asks in which party a candidate is a registered voter.
However, the county and the state should have caught the error when they certified her filing form in mid-December, Bales said. She has been registered as an unaffiliated voter since 2005, she said, but has voted for and supported Democratic candidates.
Rachel Raper, the county’s elections director, signed off on the form Dec. 13 and checked the box certifying that Bales was registered as a Democrat. Bales then took the form to the N.C. Board of Elections, which also certified her as a Democratic candidate. Those actions did not change Bales’ unaffiliated voter registration.
‘A series of blunders’
State law requires any challenge to a candidate to be filed within 10 business days after the filing period closes, or, in this case, by Jan. 3. Bales said Raper called her Friday evening to let her know about the issue.
“I think that this is a series of blunders that are hurting voters, and I’m willing to take responsibility for my part in this mistake,” Bales said. “But the board of elections at the county and the state level need to take responsibility for their part in this, too, and disenfranchising voters is not taking responsibility.”
Questions about her candidate status were raised last week when someone discovered the discrepancy, Bales said.
Matt Hughes, second vice chairman of the N.C. Democratic Party and a Hillsborough Town Board member, posted Friday on Twitter that the state elections board had confirmed Bales is ineligible for a spot on the Democratic ballot.
“It’s discouraging that agencies that should be administering elections have not followed their procedures or made assumptions that allowed someone who should not be allowed to run in the Democratic primary to move forward in a Democratic primary,” Hughes said Tuesday. “I think the law is clear: Ninety days (before the election) you must be affiliated with the party in order to run in a partisan primary.”
Hughes said changes in recent years in how the state elects judges have created confusion. Those changes have included ending public financing of judicial campaigns and a failed attempt to only allow incumbents to run in N.C. Supreme Court races.
“In the course of six years, the rules on these races have changed almost every election cycle,” Hughes said.
Election protests possible
Bales has said she will fight to keep running for judge. She provided copies of her filing form this week and a cashier’s check and receipt showing her $1,220 filing fee paid to the State Board of Elections.
“Nobody’s saying that I did not go to law school, that I did not pass the bar or that I do not live in the county for the judge seat that I’m running for,” Bales said. “Nobody’s saying any of those things, which are the qualifications for this job.”
Raper said she did check Bales’ registration, but mistakenly checked the box indicating that she was registered with the Democratic Party and entered the filing into the state elections system. There are checks in place that usually prevent something like that from happening, she said.
“What I did was a manual process at the time of filing,” Raper said. “I can’t speak to what happened at the state level, but that’s when (her unaffiliated status) was flagged, and unfortunately, that’s when that flag was overridden. In a perfect world, what would have happened when they physically filed her, they saw the flag, saw she was unaffiliated, and they’d just stop it there.”
Raper agreed the recent changes in state law for judicial campaigns, as well as a new process that makes the state board responsible for filing local judicial candidates, may have added to the confusion.
If a challenge to a candidate’s eligibility is not filed within the 10-day window after the filing period, state law allows candidates and voters to file a protest.
“State law does anticipate that oversights do occur during filing and election processes, so state law allows either voters or candidates to file a protest where an alleged problem occurred,” Raper said. “If a candidate or a voter did that, then the county board would first engage in preliminary consideration where they determine if probable cause exists for a full hearing to go forward.”
Raper said the situation with Bales’ campaign will change how future candidates are certified at the local level, including the use of a two-person verification process
Bales said her concern is not just that she gets a fair opportunity to resolve the issue, but that her supporters’ votes will be counted.
“If we’re not able to come up with a solution, the practical reality is that voters are going to be disenfranchised,” Bales said. “People who have voted for me, their vote will not count.”
This story was originally published February 18, 2020 at 5:24 PM with the headline "NC woman running for judge in Democratic primary won’t be party nominee, even if she wins."
