1,900 Ballots Mishandled During 2016 Election in Durham

1,900 ballots were mishandled in Durham during the March 2016 primary election yet the State Board of Elections found ‘no fraud’ involved.

Richard Robert Rawling, 59, of Cary, pleaded guilty last Friday to failure to discharge a duty of his office and was sentenced to 30 days in jail, suspended to a year on probation and a $500 fine, according to the State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement. An obstruction of justice charge was dismissed.

Elections board officials discovered the problem during a routine audit of primary results in April 2016. The issue involved provisional ballots, which are given to voters who experience some sort of administrative issue when they show up at a polling place, such as a glitch in voter registration or trying to cast a ballot in the wrong precinct.

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All told, more than 1,900 provisional ballots were mishandled in one way or another. But state officials said the irregularities didn’t affect the results of any race, and there was no evidence ballot counts were altered to favor a specific candidate or political party. (WRAL)

Rawling ran the ballots through multiple times in order to match canvas numbers would match the provisional ballot numbers. Somehow, that’s not fraud.

The ballots were thrown out and voters were given a chance to recast their ballot.

Durham has been nothing but a cesspool of irregularities and ballot shenanigans. Remember the 90,000+ ballots that magically appeared on election night in 2016?

When I was at American Lens, we covered the 2016 ballot issues fairly closely. Not only did we find voter disenfranchisement in multiple counties, we found that the State Board of Elections had allowed a ‘special dispensation’ for college to register students to a single address. This dispensation violates state statute on voter registration requirements.

It wasn’t just a few registered to a single address, it was hundreds. At Duke, we found over 200 students were registered to a gravel parking lot. At NCCU, we found just as many registered to the main campus address. It was the same for four other colleges we pulled registration information on.

I personally went down the list of the first 25 Duke students listed and found ALL of them, save one, were from out of state. Did they vote at home and at school?

I’ve ported all the 2016 election articles over to this site so readers can refresh their memories.

About A.P. Dillon

A.P. Dillon is a reporter currently writing at The North State Journal. She resides in the Triangle area of North Carolina. Find her on Twitter: @APDillon_ Tips: APDillon@Protonmail.com

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