Just over three weeks after election day, I got a Google Alert. My name had appeared in the digital edition of my hometown’s daily newspaper. An article, the first of several on the subject in the following weeks, stated that the chairman of the Republican Party in Pasquotank County, where I had voted by mail-in absentee ballot, was attempting to invalidate my vote and 21 others by “challenging the residency of 22 voters who participated in last month’s election, claiming they are a ‘symptom of voter fraud’ that calls into question the outcome of the governor’s race.”
North Carolina’s governor’s race was in question, and challenge of the voter eligibility, Pat McCrory has not accepted defeat . After loosing to Roy Cooper on November 8th surpassed 10,000 votes. McCrory hung on demading recounts and alleging fraud in the dorm of votes cast by felons, by people voted in the name of deceased persons.
The upshot of my first hearing was the scheduling of another hearing; I was obliged to engage legal counsel. I learned that a number of factors can support a claim to a domicile, though not all are strictly determinative. For example, if you are a college student who still maintains a room at your parents’ house, including personal property, this fact could be used to argue you are domiciled there. If your mother tosses your comic books and turns your childhood room into an office, this doesn’t preclude a claim, but it would then require other evidence. Do you come home between terms and during all the major holidays? Do you have a bank account in your hometown? Do you own property there? Were you born there, raised there, and/or did you go to high school there? These are all positive indicators, though they do not in and of themselves guarantee you the right to vote.
Holding a driver’s license issued by another state isn’t a deal breaker,registering to vote or actually voting in another county or state, however, forecloses the possibility of voting in your place of origin. The argument was that I had been gone long enough to become disconnected, that my ties were insufficient.
I initially found the challenge in an odd manner. I wasn’t a felon, hadn’t attempted to vote in someone else name. Richard Gilbert filed an elections protest petition.
Holding a driver’s license issued by another state isn’t a deal breaker.
In fact, I’m far from the first student whose voter eligibility Gilbert has called into question. In his own words recorded on the filed protest, he states:
2012 election day, I successfully challenged 4 voters, In 2013, I successfully challenged 58 voters who voted in 2012 election, now in 2016 we have 21 voters who voted illegally or attempted to vote in Pasquotank County.
The above voters were students in Elizabeth City State University, at which Gilbert had also challenged 18 students in 2007, and failed.
Republicans are a party desperate to win, increasingly turning to voter suppression, partisan redistricting. These efforts have only increased my desire to vote in North Carolina.
