The Halifax County Board of Elections this evening will examine protests filed concerning perceived irregularities in the May 6 primary.
The meeting will be held at 7 p.m. in the board of commissioners room at the Historic Courthouse in Halifax.
Board of Elections Supervisor Kristin Scott said the review of the protests, filed by C.E. McCollum and John Espenshade, will determine if the complaints carry enough weight to grant a formal hearing on the matter.
In a statement released this morning, the Halifax County Black Caucus said it Is strongly supporting the filed protests of McCollum, a minister, and Espenshade, a Littleton resident. “Certainly one has to question if there were forces at work seeking to undermine the votes of citizens in the county,” the statement said.
The May 6 primary saw longtime Halifax County Commissioner James Pierce lose his bid for re-election and challenger O.D. Sykes, a local minister, fail in his attempt to gain a seat on the board. Pierce and Sykes lost to a slate of anti-school merger candidates that included incumbents Vernon Bryant and Rives Manning, along with challenger Patrick Qualls.
“Looking at the fact that people were given the wrong ballots at several polling places and that the HCBC has received complaints that errors occurred in over 80 percent of the precincts in the county, something has to be done,” the statement said.
Among the other complaints in the protest of the election are: precincts not being properly staffed; persons allowed to enter precincts who were not voting or living in certain precincts; racial discrimination; voter security questioned; ballots found in a trashcan and relatives working at the same precinct as well as other irregularities.
The black caucus alleges McCollum and Espenshade were called before the Halifax County Board of Elections with only 45 minutes notice to appear on May 13 “It did not matter that they had other engagements on their calendar,” according to the statement. “While Espenshade was able to get to Halifax, Rev. McCollum could not as he was in Rocky Mount with his wife at a medical appointment.”
